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Loss is at the heart of "Halflead Bay" in which Jamie, a teenager in a fishing village in Australia tries to keep ahead of his mother's deterioration from MS; his desire for Alison, the off-limits girlfriend of a frightening, violent thug; and his father's expectations. The story contains some of Le's most exquisite prose, recording everything from the observable gradations of light to death as "a thrown switch, a fizzling of the senses, the sound sucked out of things. Your eyes a dark cold green hurt."

In "Tehran Calling" a young woman confronts herself and her misconceptions about her best friend, Parvin. And in "Cartagena" you won't be able to dislodge the blistered, hardened voice of the teenage assassin, Juan Pablo Merendez, from your head, nor will you soon forget the voice of the orphan narrator at Hiroshima before the bomb is dropped.

Finally, the journey on the overcrowded trawler ferrying Vietnamese escapees across the South China Sea is unquestionably one of the most remarkable, complex stories since Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

Le tells the story of two women: 16-year-old Mai whose parents have sacrificed to ensure her escape from Vietnam, and Quyen, a young mother traveling with her 6-year-old child, Truong, "who was like an old man crushed into the rude shape of a boy." Again, the question of sacrifice and the depths and shortcomings of parental love are rendered like the cloud streaks after the storm Le describes: "blue-bruised against a sky the color of skin."

In the first story, the alter-ego Nam makes reference to his boat people story, glibly referring to it as though it were a toss-off, easily achieved.

It is clear, however, after reading this final stunning work that Nam Le spent everything he had -- love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice -- to write it.

There is so much to say about Nam Le's genius it would take a book and even that may not be enough. With "The Boat," Nam Le defeats time, hollowness and cliché in each story, earning him the right to reap sheaves, buckets, reservoirs of generous, unabashed praise.

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