PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS FICTION

1954

(No Award)

2006 parallel novel retelling Little Women from the father's perspective in the Civil War

March by Geraldine Brooks

Sheriff Heck Tate orders the shooting of what rabid dog carried out by Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird?

Tim Johnson

2010 focused on George Washington Crosby, an elderly clock repairman, and his recollections of his father Howard, who sold goods from a donkey-drawn cart

Tinkers by Paul Harding

1961 this is a beautiful, perfect book whose narrator Scout Finch describes the trial of a black man named Tom defended by the best, most stand-up lawyer in town named Atticus Finch; other characters include Boo Radley (the mockingbird), Jem Finch, and Bob and Mayella Ewell

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1931

Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1957

(No Award)

1964

(No Award)

1971

(No Award)

1974

(No Award)

1977

(No Award)

In what year did Saul Bellow win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize for Literature?

1976

1945

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

1981 Ignatius J. Reilly lives with his mother in 1960s New Orleans and comes into contact with many interesting characters in the French Quarter like Myrna Minkoff, Dorian Greene, the Levys, Claude Robichaux

A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication)

1958 this autobiographical book is set in Knoxville, TN in the 1910s; it was published posthumously to help out the family; Time in 2005 listed it as one of the 100 best English books since 1923; a young boy sees his father go to visit his own father in a hospital after he's had a stroke and be killed in a car wreck on the way home--the boy also sees the way this affects the widow, her children, her atheist father, and her alcoholic bro-in-law

A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication)

1955 The author considered this his masterpiece, though the critical reviews did not; it is set in France in World War I and portrays Corporal Stephen as Jesus--he has his troops refuse to fight, so the Germans don't fight in response. He is eventually executed for this with the argument that war is the essence of humanity

A Fable by William Faulkner

1993 collection of short stories with the common theme of a Vietnamese immigrant living in Louisiana

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1987 Phillip Carver, an editor in NY, is summoned back to Memphis to prevent the marriage of his father to a younger woman

A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

1992 modernized retelling of King Lear set on a farm in Iowa owned by the Cook family: Larry (aging father), Rose, Caroline, Ginny (narrator); reveals sexual abuse of the two elder daughters

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

2011 Bet you can't guess what this is: it's another collection of short stories. Never saw that coming. This collection focuses on Bennie Salazar, a rock music exec, and his assistant Sasha

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

1960 this is a political novel in which the president nominates a communist man--Robert Leffingwell--to be Secretary of State in order to negotiate peace with the USSR

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1922

Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

1947

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

2015

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

1998 the 45th high school reunion of a class is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman and focuses on Seymour "Swede" Levov, successful Jewish American businessman, via Swede's younger brother Jerry, who recounts tales of his dead brother one of Time Magazine's top 100 books

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1956 novel set in the eponymous Confederate prison camp in Georgia features a humanized Henry Wirz, William Collins, and the Raider

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1972 a wheelchaired historian, Lyman Ward, writes about his grandparents on the frontier; it is based directly on the writings of Mary Hallock Foote; Lyman was part of the hippie movement in the 60s; Lyman's son went to Berkeley for sociology and is against history; the girl who records him speaking is currently at Berkeley

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1926

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

1988 Sethe is an escaped black slave living after the Civil War in Ohio with her daughter Denver and her mother-in-law Baby Suggs; she had two older boys, but they ran away, and it turns out that she killed her daughter, the eponymous character, who comes back to haunt them sort of. Boys from the Sweet Home plantation fell in love with Sethe when she arrived and she married Halle but lived witterm-80h Paul D after Halle disappeared after they left for Cincinnati

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Who won two Pulitzers?

Booth Tarkington, 1919, 1922, William Faulkner, 1955, 1963 (awarded posthumously), John Updike, 1982, 1991

1989 Ira and Maggie Moran travel to and from Baltimore in one day for a funeral Time Magazine's book of the year

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

In Faulkner's The Reivers, what do Lucius Priest and Boon Hogganbeck reive?

Car

1970 short story collection

Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1966 nineteen short stories that are NOT novellas

Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

She takes Benjy to church with her on Easter. What African American servant is the central character of part 4 of The Sound and the Fury?

Dilsey

1943

Dragon's Teethby Upton Sinclair

1927

Early Autumn by Luis Bromfield

1978 short story collection

Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

2002 Miles Roby is the manager of a restaurant in the eponymous blue collar town; his ex-wife Janine has become terrible after working out with her new husband; their daughter Tick (Christina) must deal with her boyfriend and her new step-father, whom she hates

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Who was originally selected for two Pulitzers but was only awarded one because of the "overturn"?

Ernest Hemingway, 1941 (overturned), 1953 (given)

1985 plot focusing on American academics in England; 54-year-old Virginia Miner specializes in children's literature and thinks she loves England; other characters are American Chuck and Fred Turner

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

2005 autofiction of Reverend John Ames, who is dying of a heart condition but is a congregationalist pastor in small town Iowa

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

1937

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1949 book divided into three parts for each day (Thursday, September 3 1943 to Saturday, September 5 1943) set in World War II at a fictional army base in Florida

Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

1936

Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis

1969 first Native American novel, based on Momaday's experience at the Jemez Pueblo: the main character Abel lives in New Mexico and is a compilation of all the boys Momaday knew on the reservation other important characters are his grandfather Francisco and his friend Ben Bennally, whom he knows from another reservation

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

1976 roman a clef about Bellow's friendship with poet Delmore Schwartz: Von Humboldt Fleisher serves as Schwartz, his protege Charlie Citrine as Bellow; also the wannabe Chi-town gangsta Rinaldo Cantabile

Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1942

In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1996 first novel to win the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner in the same year New Jerseyan Frank Bascombe visits his ex-wife, his current lover, his troubled son, a tenant, and some clients in the same weekend

Independence Day by Richard Ford

2000 nine short stories about Indians and Indian Americans caught between the traditional culture and the "new world" featuring one story called "Sexy"

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

1984 third book in the Albany Cycle, set in the Great Depression, focusing on alcoholic Francis Phelan

Ironweed by William Kennedy

What author tells of George Caldwell and his son in Centaur and of residents of the Diamond County Home in Poorhouse Fair?

John Updike

1944

Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin

1934

Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1930

Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge

2018

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

1986 Texas Rangers (Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call) drive cattle from Texas to Montana in 1876

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1997 The eponymous character rises from assistant in his father's cigar shop to bellboy at the Vanderlyn Hotel to owning his own hotel; he deals with his wife Caroline, with whom he has a bad relationship, and her sister Emmeline, who becomes a close friend and business partner of his

Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

2003 Bildungsroman and family saga about the Greek Stephanides family; deals with nature vs. nurture, rebirth, polar opposites, mutations in genes

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2012

No award

1935

Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson

Telling of the Bergsons what is the first book in Cather's Prairie trilogy?

O Pioneers!

1953 taking place over four days, this story centers on Santiago, an old experienced fisherman who has had bad luck for 84 days. He has an apprentice of sorts named Manolin who is not allowed to work with him because he's so unproductive; Santiago catches a marlin and they have a fierce battle to get back to shore--several sharks attack and end up eating the marlin, so when Santiago arrives back, all he has to show for himself are the remains, which still award him great respect from the other fishermen

Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

2009 collection of short stories about a family in Crosby, Maine aka On The Coast of Maine

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

1923

One of Ours by Willa Cather

Name either poetry collection for which Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize?

Promises or Now and Then

1991 last in the series about Harry Angstrom in the years 1988-89. Now he and Janice are living in Florida and he must deal with the results of various sexual encounters

Rabbit At Rest by John Updike

1982 part of the four part series including Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, and Rabbit At Rest; Harry Angstrom has lived in Brewer, PA his whole life and is not happy: his wife Janice drinks a lot, his college-age son Nelson is an idiot, and he wonders about his ex-lover Ruth, whom he impregnated

Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

1929

Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1925

So Big by Edna Ferber

What is the last name of Thomas, the character who moves to Jefferson from "nowhere" and fights in the Civil War in Absalom, Absalom?

Sutpen

1948 collection of short stories in World War II set in the Coral Sea and the Solomon Islands; based upon the author's experience in the same war on the island of Vanuatu

Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

1924

The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

2001 follows the lives of two Jewish teenage artists, one being Czech and the other from Brooklyn in 1939; both being related to people in performing arts (either Harry Houdini or someone in vaudeville), they create together The Escapist, a comic book hero

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Elijah Muhammad and the Audubon Ballroom appear in what book by an American author?

The Autobiography of Malcom X

1928

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

2008 set in New Jersey but deals with Diaz's experience with dictator Trujillo; main character: Oscar de Leon. Narrated by Oscar's roommate Yunior de Las Casas, who dated his sister Lola; Oscar is shot by Gorilla Grodd and Solomon Grundy

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

1952 having topped the NY Times Bestseller list for 122 weeks total, this book deals with the questionable way that sailors are treated specifically during the hurricane of 1944; the narrator is Willis "Willie" Keith

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1983 epistolary novel set in Georgia focusing on black women in the 1930s featuring Celie, a fourteen-year-old girl who gets raped, Nettie, Celie's younger sister who is prettier than she, Shug Avery, who is first Albert's mistress and then Celie's lover, and Albert, the guy who mistreats the girls

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1968 first person narrative by the leader of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt based upon this man's own account, written by lawyer Thomas Ruffin Gray in 1831

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1962 alcoholic priest Hugh Kennedy returns to his New England home in order to mend his relationships

The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor

1980 story about the execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah: Gilmore murdered two men, was sentenced to death, and chose to die by firing squad in 1977 as quickly as possible rather than be on death row

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1967 a book fictionalizing the Beilis case in Russia, in which Menahem Mendel Beilis is imprisoned in Tsarist Russia; the corresponding character in this is Yakov Bok, who is arrested on suspicion of murdering a Christian boy, then jailed very unfairly: he undergoes much spiritual growth and says "there is no such thing as an apolitical man, especially a Jew"

The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

2014

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

1932

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1940

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1999 concerning Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the three characters are Woolf herself in 1923 writing it, Mrs. Brown in 1949 reading it as she plans her husband's birthday party, and Clarissa Vaughan, a lesbo in 2001 celebrating a literary award her friend Richard won

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1965 set in Alabama, seven generations of the Howland family live in the same house, which racism pervades;

The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau

1975 historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 peppered with lots of famous people and from several perspectives

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

2004 set in antebellum Virginia, it deals with black slaves owned by white and black alike

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

1938

The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand

1990 Cuban brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo settle in NYC in the 1950s; it chronicles Cesar's last hours as he recounts all of this

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

What Norman Mailer novel focuses on one platoon in Anopopei?

The Naked and the Dead

1973 Laurel Hand goes to New Orleans to care for her dying father, a judge, and to deal with his awful wife Fay; they go to Mt. Salus, Mississippi, where Laurel grew up, for the funeral and don't get along

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

2013 set in North Korea and dealing with all the corruption and such there; characters: Pak Jun Do, Commander Ga, Sun-moon, Kim Jong Il (dear leader

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

2019

The Overstory by Richard Powers

1963 Golden Book of Yoknapatawapha country; Lucius Priest and Boon Hooganbeck go to Memphis, where they discover Ned McCaslin has been hiding with them

The Reivers by William Faulkner

2007 a post-apocalyptic story about a father and a son travel across a desolate Earth inhabited mainly by cannibals; the man dies in the end

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

1994 Quoyle works at a newspaper pressroom in NY and at the start of the novel, his parents commit sucide together, his wife Petal leaves him and subsequently dies in a car crash, and his daughters are almost sold into sex trafficking. His daughters are okay, but his aunt Agnis Hamm tells him to return to their ancestral homeland of Newfoundland

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

1995 autofiction of Daisy Goodwill Flett, who is followed by death when her mother dies in childbirth

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1933

The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling

1979 short story collection (god, Pulitzers, short stories collections aren't that great!) including "The Enormous Radio," "The 548," and "The Swimmer"

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

2016

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

1951 third in the trilogy The Awakening Land, it focuses on Sayward Wheeler, who watches her small town in Ohio become a big one in the 1860s; Richter did his best to replicate the speech used in the pioneer 1860s

The Town by Conrad Richter

1959 this novel, while Tom Sawyer-ish, contains graphic episodes that were shocking at the time; narrated by Jaimie who follows a wagon train in the 1849 gold rush and his drunk doctor father

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

2017

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

1950 the second in a series about traveling west on the Oregon Trail in the 1830s, this novel consists of senator William Tadlock leading a group to Oregon; he is overthrown by Lije Evans

The Way West by A. B. Guthrie

1939

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings