A curious statement was made by this year’s Pulitzer Prize committee as, for the first time since A River Runs Through It failed to win in 1977, no award was given in the fiction category. Instead, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King will get to split the “tie” on their records. In the history of the Prize, there have only been nine other years without a fiction winner.
Meanwhile in the General Nonfiction category, Stephen Greenblatt‘s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern took home the top prize.
Here are this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with excerpts where available:
Fiction:
- Train Dreams by Denis Johnson – (excerpt)
- Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (excerpt, The Millions interview)
- The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (excerpt, previously unpublished scene)
General Nonfiction:
- Winner: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (excerpt)
- One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman (excerpt)
- Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl (excerpt)
History:
- Winner: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (excerpt, The Millions review)
- Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde (excerpt – PDF)
- The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan (excerpt)
- Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (excerpt)
Biography:
- Winner: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (excerpt)
- Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel (excerpt)
- Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (excerpt, The Millions review)
Winners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.
