Congratulations to the book winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes:
Fiction:
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf). "A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia's Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal."
Fiction finalists: Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park (Random House) and Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
History:
No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books). "A breathtakingly original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city's abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents."
History finalists: American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Michael Willrich (Basic Books) and Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion by Elliott West (University of Nebraska Press)
Biography (two winners):
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). "A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader's life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination."
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster). "A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters."
Biography finalist: Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin's Press)
Memoir or Autobiography:
Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth). "A genre-bending account of the author's 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss."
Memoir or Autobiography finalists: The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen (Penguin Press) and The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland (Penguin Press)
Poetry:
Tripas: Poems by Brandon Som (Georgia Review Books). "A collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet's dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family's working lives, creating community rather than conflict."
Poetry finalists: Information Desk: An Epic by Robyn Schiff (Penguin Books) and To 2040 by Jorie Graham (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction:
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books). "A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations."
General Nonfiction finalists: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin's Press) and Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Knopf)