Junot Díaz took home the Sunday Times Short Story Award, which is known to be the world's richest short story prize.

American author Junot Díaz beat a string of British writers to take home this year's Sunday Times Short Story Award, which is known to be the richest short story prize. He won the award for his book "Miss Lora".

The book tells the story of a high-school aged boy having a relationship with an older woman in 1980s New Jersey, and is written in the "Spanglish" for which the Dominican-born writer is known. The novel fetched him the prize worth $47,000. According to judge and novelist Andrew O'Hagan, the book was a "contemporary classic."

The author himself reveals that never in his dreams too would he have imagined winning this award. "It seems utterly disingenuous but [winning] was so astonishing - I had completely written the whole thing off. I'm one of those people whose ability to convince themselves that something is a done deal is legendary," he said. "For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honoring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe. We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe."

Other contenders for the award were British authors Mark Haddon, Ali Smith and Sarah Hall.

The American author joins former winners of the prestigious award including Kevin Barry, who won the prize last year for his story "Beer Trip to Llandudno", American Anthony Doerr, who won in 2011 for his story "The Deep", and New Zealander CK Stead, who took the first prize in 2010 with "Last Season's Man".