ALL THE LIGHT Wins Pulitzer
Guaranteeing its continued tenure on best seller lists, All the Light We Cannot See (S&S/Scribner) by Anthony Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, announced yesterday.
An unexpected breakout best seller, it was on most of the year’s best books lists, a finalist for the National Book Award (that prize went to Redeployment by Phil Klay, Penguin Press), and is on the shortlist for ALA’s 2015 Carnegie Medal.
UPDATE: The Guardian describes how Doerr got the news of his win and says the book “is not like your average great American novel, in part because it is a very lyrical piece of work.” The Daily Beast gives an in-depth look at all the winners.
General Nonfiction Winner
The Six
th Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert (Macmillan/Holt; S&S Audio)
Also on multiple best books lists this year, including the New York Times Book Review‘s Top Ten, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a finalist for the upcoming ALA Carnegie Medal.
She managed to leaven the book’s scary findings with humor, wisecracking with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last year:
The other books winning Pulitzers are:
History
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn (Hill and Wang)
UPDATE: A University of Colorado professor, Fenn is at work on a biography of Sacagawea.
Biography or Autobiography
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer (Random House)
UPDATE: The author says the win was a complete shock. He also notes that Steven Spielberg is still working on plans to adapt his 1977 book, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (RH/Knopf),
Poetry
Digest by Gregory Pardlo (University Press of New England/Four Way Books)
UPDATE: The poet discusses his unexpected fame in an interview in the New York Times.