PVPF 2024

Two Fiction Novels Receive Pulitzer Prize for the First Time in 105 Years

"Trust" was rated one of the year's finest novels by The New York Times and The Washington Post and received the Kirkus Prize for fiction, and it was also on the long list for the Booker Prize.
on May 09, 2023

The modern adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, and Hernan Diaz's Trust, an original story of riches and duplicity set in 1920s New York, both received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Monday.

In the 105-year history of the category, this is the first time two fiction novels have won the Pulitzer Prize. Officials have repeatedly neglected to announce a fiction winner, most recently in 2012.

"Trust" was rated one of the year's finest novels by The New York Times and The Washington Post and received the Kirkus Prize for fiction, and it was also on the long list for the Booker Prize.

A small boy's perseverance and challenges as he grows up in southern Appalachia are the subjects of Kingsolver's book, which was picked by Oprah Winfrey for her book club last autumn and recognized by The Washington Post as one of the year's most anticipated books.

Kingsolver, 68, has long incorporated social themes into her books, including "The Bean Trees" and the Winfrey pick "The Poisonwood Bible," She was instrumental in creating the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. The author said in a phone interview on Monday that she sees the Pulitzer as an endorsement of her book and a misunderstood and undervalued region of the country. Kingsolver, an Appalachian native residing on a farm in southwest Virginia, placed "Demon Copperhead" in the region.

Because of how unnoticed and frequently misunderstood we are by the rest of the world, Kingsolver says she created this book for her people. "Therefore, I couldn't be more ecstatic about the Pulitzer.

Diaz, who was also reached by phone, believes that Kingsolver's book and his take on the theme of class are distinct. "Demon Copperhead" dramatizes living at the extreme bottom of the rich-to-poor spectrum. How such a society is made is explored in "Trust," which opens with a novel-within-the-novel about a banking tycoon and his daughter.

"I wanted to talk about the process of accumulating wealth," said Diaz, 49, whose debut book "In the Distance" was a Pulitzer nominee. "I wanted to talk about class, money, and how money is made," the author said.

On Monday, several works with racial undertones were honored. After winning the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize from the New York Historical Society, Beverly Gage's critically praised book "G-Man," on former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was awarded the Pulitzer for biography.

The Pulitzer judges praised it for its "deeply researched and nuanced look" at Hoover's "monumental achievements and crippling flaws," notably his persecution of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the first significant Hoover biography in decades.

For general nonfiction, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa's "His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice" won. In contrast, Jefferson Cowie's "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" won for history. Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for their opera "Omar," about an Islamic scholar kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The play "English" by Sanaz Toossi won for drama. "English" was praised by the Pulitzer Committee as "a quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities and also represent a new life."

The ambitious drama "On Sugarland," by Aleshea Harris, "inspired by Sophocles of a community shaped by the trauma of a nameless war," and "The Far Country," by Lloyd Suh, "an account of emigrants who traveled from China to San Francisco and suffered in the shadows of a strange new world" were among the finalists.

The one-act drama "English" received its off-Broadway premiere at Atlantic Theatre Company. An Orange County, California native named Toossi is an Iranian American writer who earned a master's degree from New York University. One of her other compositions is "Wish You Were Here."

The Pulitzer Prize for memoir or autobiography went to Hua Hsu's "Stay True," which the judges described as "an elegant and poignant coming-of-age account that considers intense, youthful friendships but also random violence." Carl Phillips, one of the most well-known poets in the nation, took home the poetry prize for his collection "Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020."