And the Pulitzer Goes To.....

The literary fiction readers of the world can breathe a collective sign of relief this evening: the Pulitzer Prizes were announced today and (joy!) a fiction prize was awarded this year.  The prize went to Adam Johnson for his experimental--possibly romantic, maybe a little bit political and kinda' navel-gazing--title The Orphan Master's Son.  And if my description seems a bit vague, well, there's a good reason: while almost all of the major review sources were overwhelmingly positive about it, each one seems to focus on a different aspect of the work.  The reading public's response was underwhelming, but the Pulitzer will inevitably mean a rebirth.

Other notable titles include the history winner, Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam,  and for general non-fiction, Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. 

For the complete list of winners, check out the Pulitzer Prize website and give the Reference Desk a call if you need help getting a hold of the titles you find most interesting!

Happy Reading!

What Pulitzer?

Here's a first...
Well, not actually a first--it happened once before. In 1977. The Pulitzer Awards were announced yesterday and, no kidding: they didn't award one for fiction this year.
The three books on the finalist list were: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.
The Pulitzer gave only the statement, "The three books were carefully considered, but in the end, none mustered the mandatory majority for granting a prize, so no prize was awarded."
C'est la vie. For more information on the other awards that were granted this year, see the 2012 Pulitzer Awards page.