Goon Squad Takes the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Prizes
April 18, 2011 | 11 books mentioned 2

Related Books:

coverThis year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction has gone to Jennifer Egan’s much praised A Visit from the Goon Squad. The win caps a year that saw this “novel in stories” go from a book anticipated by the literary set to becoming a prize winner and bestseller. Jonathan Dee and Chang-rae Lee are the runners up. Lee is a past winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, while Dee continues to receive critical notice as a novelist. Incidentally, this marks the third year in five that The Tournament of Books has predicted the Pulitzer result. The Road won both in 2007, as did The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008.

Here are this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with excerpts where available:

Fiction:

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General Nonfiction:

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History:

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Biography:

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Winners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

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2 comments:

  1. The PowerPoint chapter in Egan’s novel was one of the most unexpectedly moving sixty-odd pages I think I’ve ever seen in a novel.

    Just thinking about Pulitzer winners in the past few years, I wonder how Egan’s experimentation with time relates to the way Diaz explores the relationship between the individual and history in “Oscar Wao.” After so many years of novels trying to divorce or strain the individual’s relationship with time, are we seeing something of an effort to re-insert characters into history in the past year(s)? (Franzen’s “Freedom” certainly, and maybe even to a certain extent “Super Sad True Love Story”)

  2. Argh, I am filled with literary regret b/c I got Goon Squad on audio book and missed it in print. Only recently did I pick up the print copy and flip through at a bookstore and was just slammed by how inventive the Power Point chapter is. I have mixed feelings about the “Making Hats in Third Reich United States” chapter, but overall I had a really positive experience with this novel, but argh, I wish I had READ not LISTENED.

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Prizes

The Pulitzer needs a shortlist

Prizes
April 19, 2006 | 11 books mentioned 1

I was ruminating a bit about the Pulitzer Prize this week and wondering why it isn’t a bigger deal. The bookstore I worked at in Los Angeles may not be indicative of national trends, but while I was there, the Booker Prize and the National Book Award moved more books than the Pulitzer. (The Nobel Prize had a bigger impact on sales than all the other awards combined, believe it or not.) I think part of the reason that the Pulitzer fails to capture the interest of readers is that it’s much less controversial than other awards. Pulitzer winners are almost always safe picks. But part of it, I think, is that the award has no build up. The judges do not announce the nominees (aka the shortlist) in advance, instead the finalists are revealed at the same time as the winner. It’s pretty obvious that having a shortlist would build interest – some might say artificially – by placing the prize in the public eye for longer. But I’d argue that the Pulitzer is worthy of this treatment. Though the picks are often safe, taken together, the Pulitzer winners are an incomplete, but still compelling bunch of books. The Pulitzers are primarily a journalism award, and that, I think, matters too, in that it allows us to equate the novel with journalism, which, at its best, is meant to be a noble and unfrivolous pursuit. (And this isn’t just the J-school grad in me talking.) Finally, giving the Pulitzer a shortlist would just be more fun and it would give us book bloggers more to natter on about.Previously: Excerpts and links for the Pulitzer winners and finalists.

Prizes
| 11 books mentioned 1
Prizes

The 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Goes to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ‘The Sympathizer’

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April 18, 2016 | 11 books mentioned 5

The Pulitzer jury named Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer this year’s winner in the fiction category.

Here are this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with bonus links:

Fiction:

Winner: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Nguyen’s Year in Reading 2015)
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link (Memory is a Mysterious Machine: The Millions Interviews Kelly Link)
Maud’s Line by Margaret Verble

 

General Nonfiction:

Winner: Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power

History:

Winner: Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles
Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War by Brian Matthew Jordan
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott

Biography or Autobiography:

Winner: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles
The Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry:

Winner: Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian
Alive: New and Selected Poems by Elizabeth Willis
Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss

Winners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.

Prizes
| 11 books mentioned 5
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Ask a Book Question Prizes

Ask a Book Question: The 66th in a Series (A Little NBA Speculation)

Ask a Book Question Prizes
October 1, 2008 | 11 books mentioned 8 2 min read

Chall writes in with this question:Any National Book Award predictions?Awards season is upon us. The Booker shortlist is out, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced in the next week or so, and the National Book Award finalists will be named on October 15th. Chall’s question gives us an excuse to engage in a bit of speculation, though we’ll stick with fiction for the most part. Offering up some guesses at who might make the NBA cut are Garth and Edan, our two contributors most plugged in to the latest in contemporary fiction.Edan: (some of whose guesses were “completely pulled from thin air, for no reason.”)The Boat by Nam Le (see Edan’s interview with Nam)America, America by Ethan CaninFine Just the Way It Is by Annie ProulxIndignation by Phillip RothThe Good Thief by Hannah TintiEdan also likes An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken and The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston in non-fiction.Garth: (“Edan’s got some good stuff going on with her picks. I think there will be at least one debut author and one book of short stories, and The Boat is a good call. The Canin is interesting, too, as he’s well-regarded and this book hasn’t gotten as much ink as it might have. For the sake of doing something different, I’m going to go another way”)Home by Marilynne RobinsonThe Lazarus Project by Aleksandar HemonAtmospheric Disturbances by Rivka GalchenA Better Angel by Chris AdrianLush Life by Richard Price (a “sleeper” pick)Incidentally, both also wanted to pick Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, which was recently snubbed by the Booker. But I don’t think O’Neill is a U.S. citizen, and that would disqualify him from the NBA. And here are a few of my guesses:Max:Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa LahiriThe Monsters of Templeton by Lauren GroffPeople of the Book by Geraldine BrooksCity of Thieves by David BenioffHome by Marilynne RobinsonShare your picks in the comments below. Name up to five books, and the whoever is closest will get bragging rights. Remember: only books with “scheduled publication dates between December 1, 2007 and November 30, 2008” are eligible. And the author must be a U.S. citizen.

Ask a Book Question Prizes
| 11 books mentioned 8 2 min read
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