Pulitzer Prize: fiction

In his will, publisher Joseph Pulitzer provided funding to create the Pulitzer Prize. The first prize for a novel was awarded in 1918. It was replaced by a fiction prize in 1948. Tastes change, in fiction as in all things. Some of the older books are forgotten now. But others remain popular, or at least well-known and respected.

 
2026: Angel Down, by Daniel Kraus

2025: James, by Percival Everett

2024: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips

2023: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver; and Trust, by Hernan Diaz

2022: The Netanyahus, by Joshua Cohen

2021: The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich

2020: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

2019: The Overstory, by Richard Powers

2018: Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

2017: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

2016: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

2015: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

2014: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

2013: The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson

2011: A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

2010: Tinkers, by Paul Harding

2009: Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

2007: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

2006: March, by Geraldine Brooks

2005: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

2004: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

2003: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

2002: Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon

2000: Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

1999: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

1998: American Pastoral, by Philip Roth

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, by Steven Millhauser

1996: Independence Day, by Richard Ford

1995: The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields

1994: The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx

1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler

1992: A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley

1991: Rabbit At Rest, by John Updike

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, by Oscar Hijuelos

1989: Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler

1988: Beloved, by Toni Morrison

1987: A Summons to Memphis, by Peter Taylor

1986: Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry

1985: Foreign Affairs, by Alison Lurie

1984: Ironweed, by William Kennedy

1983: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

1982: Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike

1981: A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

1980: The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer

1979: The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever

1978: Elbow Room, by James Alan McPherson

1976: Humboldt’s Gift, by Saul Bellow

1975: The Killer Angels, by Michael Shara

1973: The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty

1972: Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

1970: Collected Stories, by Jean Stafford

1969: House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott

1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron

1967: The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud

1966: Collected Stories, by Katherine Anne Porter

1965: The Keepers of the House, by Shirley Ann Grau

1963: The Reivers, by William Faulkner

1962: The Edge of Sadness, by Edwin O’Connor

1961: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

1960: Advise and Consent, by Allen Drury

1959: The Travels of Jailie McPheeters, by Robert Lewis Taylor

1958: A Death in the Family, by James Agee

1956: Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor

1955: A Fable, by William Faulkner

1953: The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

1952: The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk

1951: The Town, by Conrad Richter

1950: The Way West, by A.B. Guthrie

1949: Guard of Honor, by James Gould Cozens

1948: Tales of the South Pacific, by James A. Michener

1947: All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

1945: A Bell for Adano, by John Hersey

1944: Journey in the Dark, by Martin Flavin

1943: Dragon’s Teeth, by Upton Sinclair

1942: In This Our Life, by Ellen Glasgow

1940: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

1939: The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan

1938: The Late George Apley, by John Phillips Marquand

1937: Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

1936: Honey in the Horn, by Harold L. Davis

1935: Now in November, by Josephine Winslow Johnson

1934: Lamb in His Bosom, by Caroline Miller

1933: The Store, by T.S. Stribling

1932: The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck

1931: Years of Grace, by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1930: Laughing Boy, by Oliver Lafarge

1929: Scarlet Sister Mary, by Julia Peterkin

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder

1927: Early Autumn, by Louis Bromfield

1926: Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis

1925: So Big, by Edna Ferber

1924: The Able McLaughlins, by Margaret Wilson

1923: One of Ours, by Willa Cather

1922: Alice Adams, by Booth Tarkington

1921: The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington

1918: His Family, by Ernest Poole

The Biblio File: images of cover art, for bibliophiles

David Levine on writers: Yukio Mishima

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear. 

Lit Toons: Cartoons with a bookish bent

First Lines: Cormac McCarthy

They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hills in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face.

Child of God

Cormac McCarthy

"They say it's your birthday" - writers born on May 11

Sheila Burnford  (1918)
Camilo José Cela  (1916)
Stanley Elkin  (1930)
Rubem Fonseca  (1925)
Mari Sandoz  (1896)

William P. Young  (1955)