Chloe Aridjis won the $15,000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel Sea Monsters (Catapult). "In these extraordinary times, the written word has never been so important or healing," said Louis Bayard, PEN/Faulkner Awards committee chair. "Sea Monsters, along with our other four finalists, exemplifies the richness, artistry, and diversity of the American literary landscape." The other finalists will receive $5,000.
The judges commented: "Our strenuous advocacy for a first-ever long-list stemmed from our commitment to elevate the 10 exceptional books and their creators whose enormous talents belong in the often insular North American literary tradition. Each of our five finalists deserves the prize for the ways they opened new veins of investigation in terms of craft, theme, and voice. Each book moved and inspired us deeply and is a cause for celebration. It is a testament to the fairness of this process that we explored every possible reason to award the prize to each of these writers before choosing our winner: Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis. Set against spectacular Oaxacan landscapes and full of surrealist possibilities, Sea Monsters is a stunning exploration of the ways its brilliant teenage narrator's interior and exterior worlds are both fluid and in opposition. This dreamlike near-fable of equal parts philosophical and intellectual vigor is a book unlike any other; a true standout and a gift for these times in which we are all craving escape."
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The finalists for the Plutarch Award, honoring the best biography of the year and sponsored by the Biographers International Organization, are:
All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860 by Sidney Blumenthal (Simon & Schuster)
Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (Norton)
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King (Doubleday)
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer (Knopf)
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell (Viking)
The winner will be announced May 16.