Pulitzer Prize Fiction Awardees & Honorees

John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces was written in the 1960s but only published years after the author’s death. It depicts the adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, an academic but lazy man who, at age 30, lives with his mother in New Orleans in the early 1960s. Forced to find a job, he encounters a string of colorful characters endemic to the city of the time.The novel begins outside the D. H. Holmes... Read A Confederacy of Dunces Summary

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A sprawling historical novel, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, explores the overarching theme of lost and redeemed humanity during the waning days of World War II. Told in chapters that alternate between the lives of Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig, each section, or group of chapters, also alternates between these characters’ past lives and the unfolding siege of Saint-Malo by Allied forces in August 1944. Plot SummaryMarie-Laure grows up in Paris... Read All the Light We Cannot See Summary

American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth examines in detail one man’s quest for the American dream and the fragility of the entire enterprise. Roth, one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of the 20th century, focuses his narrative microscope through the eyes of Nathan Zuckerman, his literary alter ego from whose perspective he has written 10 other novels, including Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and The Human Stain (2000). Roth has won virtually... Read American Pastoral Summary

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A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich tells the story of an eighteenth-century midwife and healer living in Maine, the plot unraveling through her own diary entries, expanded upon by Ulrich. This intimate tale of historical fiction brings to light issues of religion, economics, sexuality and the common medical practices that defined the New England frontier.Ulrich begins each chapter transcribing some of Martha’s diary entries, listing the month and year in the chapter title. Following... Read A Midwife's Tale Summary

An Army at Dawn is a nonfiction military history book published in 2002 by American author and journalist Rick Atkinson. Subtitled The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the book chronicles the successful Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II. The first installment of Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History.This study guide refers to the 2002 edition published by Henry Holt and Company.Plot SummaryOn September 1... Read An Army at Dawn Summary

Angela’s Ashes is a 1996 memoir written by Frank McCourt. It recounts his challenging upbringing in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. At the heart of the memoir is McCourt’s account of the people and events of his childhood, and how he tried to make sense of the world around him. McCourt narrates in the present tense and follows a generally chronological order, with his time in America as a young child and then later as... Read Angela's Ashes Summary

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by the American playwright Tony Kushner is an epic story that spans two plays – Millennium Approaches, first produced in 1991, and Perestroika, which debuted in 1992. The entire two-part work premiered on Broadway in 1993. Angels in America is Kushner’s most well-known work and is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most significant American plays of the 20th century. Angels in America... Read Angels in America Summary

Written by Wallace Stegner and released in 1971, Angle of Repose is a novel about Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-bound historian who decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents, particularly his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. He hopes that their experiences will help him deal with his present situation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 and is based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, which were later published as A Victorian Gentlewoman... Read Angle of Repose Summary

A Thousand Acres is a historical fiction novel by the American author Jane Smiley. Taking place on an Iowa farm in the 1970s, the novel is a contemporary retelling of William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. Shakespeare’s play focuses on King Lear as he determines which of his three daughters will inherit his kingdom depending on how much they flatter him. Smiley’s novel reimagines Shakespeare’s tragedy on an Iowa farm in the 1970s as Larry Cook... Read A Thousand Acres Summary

August: Osage County by American playwright Tracy Letts premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in June 2007 and debuted on Broadway in December of the same year. When Beverly, the Weston family patriarch, goes missing, a web of estranged family members travel home to gather around his vitriolic spouse, Violet. The play is semi-autobiographical, and Letts explores themes of addiction, suicide, and generational trauma from his own childhood in Oklahoma. In 2008, August: Osage County won... Read August: Osage County Summary

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan tracks the passage of time in the lives of individuals in the rock music industry. The chapters defy conventional temporal and narrative chronologies, and each one is a self-contained episode in an unfolding network of stories, spanning six decades from the 1970s to the 2020s. The novel employs various narrative formats, such as the short story, the magazine article, and the graphic slide presentation. The variety... Read A Visit from the Goon Squad Summary

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is a 2015 memoir by William Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of several social journalism books such as A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique and Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters. In Barbarian Days, Finnegan reflects on his upbringing in California and Hawaii, as well as his coming of age in the late 1960s. He relays his experience of the surfing counterculture... Read Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Summary

Toni Morrison’s Beloved was published in 1987. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Inspired by the real-life story of a runaway African American enslaved woman named Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement, Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a runaway enslaved woman who takes her daughter’s life in the same manner. This study guide, which addresses physical... Read Beloved Summary

Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon is a play that centers on the disaster that befalls two brothers when they choose to fight against their own natures. Realizing that they both love the same woman, each brother ends up pursuing the dream of the other with dire consequences.Written in 1918, Beyond the Horizon was O’Neill’s first full-length work to be produced, although it wasn’t published and first performed until 1920, the same year that it won... Read Beyond the Horizon Summary

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First performed in 1955, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of American playwright Tennessee Williams’s best-known works. This classic play won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best American Play, and was adapted into a 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Adapted from Williams’s short story “Three Players of a Summer Game,” the three-act Cat on a Hot Tin Roof occurs in real-time as the Pollitt family gathers... Read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Summary

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Bruce Norris' 2010 play, Clybourne Park, imagines the events that unfolded in, before, and after Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun. It takes place in the home purchased by Lena Younger in Hansberry's play, and, like her play, addresses issues of race, class, and gender. The play examines how conversations around these issues have, and have not, changed over fifty years, often using humor.  The first act opens with Russ and Bev... Read Clybourne Park Summary

Cost of Living, a play by Martyna Majok, premiered in 2016 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. It transferred to an off-Broadway theatre in 2017, produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, and is slated to debut on Broadway in fall, 2022. The play was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and also won a 2018 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. The title of the play refers not only to the monetary costs of... Read Cost of Living Summary

Disgraced, by Ayad Akhtar, premiered in Chicago in 2012. Later that year, the play opened Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center. Disgraced won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2013, opened on the West End in 2014, and made its Broadway premiere in 2015. Like the main character, Amir Akhtar is the son of Pakistani-American immigrants and was born in the United States. His work addresses the experience of being Muslim in America and the way Islamophobia... Read Disgraced Summary

Doubt: A Parable is a 2005 play by John Patrick Shanley that analyzes an instance of doubt and suspicion in a Catholic school in the Bronx in the 1960s. In nine acts, the play tells the story of principal Sister Aloysius’s suspicions about an inappropriate relationship between a priest, Father Flynn, and a young male student.The play opens with Father Flynn giving a sermon, utilizing a parable about a young sailor whose ship sinks and... Read Doubt: A Parable Summary

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In Empire Falls, published in 2001, award-winning author Richard Russo focuses his sharp observations on family, faith, and hope for the future in small-town America, where the factories have left, the populations are dwindling, and the prospects are shrinking. Miles Roby almost got out of Empire Falls, but his mother’s illness brought him back a semester shy of graduating college. Now he runs the Empire Grill, a landmark that still anchors the dying town, and... Read Empire Falls Summary

Everybody, a one-act play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, premiered Off-Broadway in 2017 at the Signature Theatre and was first published in 2018. It is a modern retelling of Everyman, the most well-known and anthologized example of a medieval morality play, which was adapted from a Dutch play by an anonymous 15th century English writer. Morality plays first appeared in the 12th century, evolving from the Catholic Church’s cycle plays and liturgical dramas, which reenacted biblical scenes... Read Everybody Summary

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Published in 2004, Gilead is Marilynne Robinson’s second novel and the first in the Gilead trilogy, which includes Home (2008) and Lila (2014). The story is written as a letter from dying Congregationalist minister John Ames to his young son. The letter is a bittersweet account of John’s life. With a slow, thoughtful pace and intimate tone, John shares past family memories and resolves an old personal grievance with his best friend’s son. As John... Read Gilead Summary

The “coffee is for closers” line is considered one of the most iconic moments from playwright David Mamet’s entire oeuvre (Glengarry Glen Ross. Directed by James Foley, New Line Cinema, 1992). However, the line is actually nowhere to be found in the playscript for Glengarry Glenn Ross, which premiered at the National Theatre in London in 1983 and debuted on Broadway in 1984. Rather, it appears in the 1992 film adaptation, with a screenplay that... Read Glengarry Glen Ross Summary

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Gone with the Wind (1936) is the only novel by author Margaret Mitchell published during her lifetime. It is an enduring but controversial classic of American literature, and according to one poll, its popularity among American readers is only exceeded by the Bible. Thirty million copies have been sold worldwide.The novel’s tale of the Civil War is told from the perspective of the wealthy planter class that ruled the antebellum South, a class from which... Read Gone With The Wind Summary

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Historian and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) is a multidisciplinary study that uses anthropological, biological, evolutionary, and socio-economic analysis to chart the fates of different peoples throughout human history. Subtitled first as A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, and later as The Fates of Human Societies, the book seeks to understand why some groups of people have prospered while others have failed to advance to the same extent... Read Guns, Germs, and Steel Summary

Housekeeping (1980) is a novel by Marilynne Robinson that follows the upbringing of two sisters, Ruthie and Lucille Stone, in Fingerbone, Idaho, in the 1950s. This is the first novel by Marilynne Robinson. It was awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an award the author later won for her novel Gilead (2004). Beyond Housekeeping, Robinson is most known for Gilead (2004) and Home (2008). Housekeeping, which has been named... Read Housekeeping Summary

The novel House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday, was first published in 1968. Heralded as a major landmark in the emergence of Indigenous American literature, the novel won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. House Made of Dawn blends fictional and nonfictional elements to depict life on an Indigenous American reservation like the one where Momaday grew up.This guide uses an eBook version of the 2018 First Harper Perennial Modern Classics (50th Anniversary)... Read House Made of Dawn Summary

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Interpreter of Maladies is a 1999 short story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri, who is an American of Indian (specifically Bengali) heritage. The collection, Lahiri’s debut, was well-received and garnered many awards, including the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway prize. The nine stories are works of literary realism split between the immigrant experience in America and contemporary Indian life and have been held up as a model for high cultural pluralism, a subgenre... Read Interpreter of Maladies Summary

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Into Thin Air is American is authored by professional mountain climber Jon Krakauer. It is a personal account of attempting to ascend Mount Everest, prompted by an assignment from Outside magazine to cover the commercial development of the communities at the mountain’s base. Krakauer’s climbing attempt, which was fatal for several, became the deadliest expedition ever on the mountain. In the book, he reflects on his experience, reporting it as truthfully as possible.Krakauer recalls being... Read Into Thin Air Summary

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Published in 1983, Ironweed is the third entry in William Kennedy’s cycle of historical fiction set in Albany, New York; it garnered critical acclaim and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel details a few days in the life of Francis Phelan, a drifter long estranged from his family, upon his return to Albany in 1938, taking his story as a chance... Read Ironweed Summary

Written by Andrew Sean Greer and published in 2017, Less is a satirical comedy novel. It portrays the journey of Arthur Less, who after a difficult breakup plots a round-the-world trip to better understand himself. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Plot SummaryApproaching 50, Arthur Less sits in a hotel lobby waiting to be picked up for a literary event. He is a writer and will be interviewing another writer, albeit a sci-fi author... Read Less Summary

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America is a work of nonfiction by James Forman Jr., an American lawyer and legal scholar specializing in racial inequities in criminal justice. Published in 2017, this critically acclaimed book examines the complex role Black leaders played in advancing tough-on-crime policies that ultimately contributed to the mass incarceration of Black people in the United States. Drawing on his experience as a public defender and his extensive... Read Locking Up Our Own Summary

Lonesome Dove is a 1985 novel by American author Larry McMurtry. Chronologically, it is the third book in the Lonesome Dove series, although it was published before its two prequels, Dead Man’s Walk (1995) and Comanche Moon (1997). One of the most celebrated novels in the Western genre, Lonesome Dove tells the story of former Texas Rangers Augustus (Gus) McRae and Woodrow Call (Call) as they take a herd of cattle on an ill-fated drive... Read Lonesome Dove Summary

Long Day’s Journey into Night is widely considered Eugene O’Neill’s best play. It was published posthumously under the pseudonym Tyrone and is an autobiographical work about O’Neill’s family. The play was originally published in 1956 with a first showing in Sweden that same year. The play has been adapted into film several times, including productions in 1962 and 1996, as well as television adaptations in 1973, 1982, and 1987. O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Prize... Read Long Day's Journey Into Night Summary

Lost in Yonkers is a play by American playwright Neil Simon that premiered in 1991. It centers around Jay Kurnitz, a teenage boy sent with his younger brother, Arty, to live with his grandmother in Yonkers. Many critics consider the play, which debuted to overwhelming critical acclaim, one of Simon’s best works. It explores themes of abbreviated childhood, war, and generational trauma. Lost in Yonkers won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama upon its release, and... Read Lost In Yonkers Summary

March is mostly told from the perspective of Mr. March, a military chaplain assisting Union soldiers during the Civil War. In the opening sequence, Mr. March tries to save the life of a wounded soldier but fails. This marks the first death for which he holds himself responsible, providing a foundation for his increasingly guilty conscience. His wartime assignment brings him to a plantation that he recognizes from his youth, sending him into a detailed flashback:... Read March Summary

Maus by Art Spiegelman is the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. It originally ran in Spiegelman’s Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991 before receiving mainstream attention as two collected volumes, Maus I in 1986 and Maus II in 1991. This guide is based on the 1996 complete edition. This historic memoir interlaces two narratives, one of Spiegelman’s Jewish father as he survives World War II Poland and the Auschwitz concentration camp, and... Read Maus Summary

Mean Spirit (1990) is the first novel by Chickasaw author Linda Hogan. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991, it was well-reviewed and established Hogan as an important Indigenous author. The novel tells the story of what came to be known as the Osage murders, a string of killings in Oklahoma’s Osage country after oil was discovered on Osage land. The murders were ultimately discovered to have been the result of not only... Read Mean Spirit Summary

Middlesex is a 2002 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides that tells a multigenerational, epic tale of a Greek family who immigrates to the US. The narrator, Calliope (or Cal) tells the story of how his grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, flee their homeland during a time of war and uncertainty, settling in the US. They harbor a family secret that changes the course of the narrator’s life: They’re brother and sister, and carry a genetic mutation... Read Middlesex Summary

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’Night, Mother by Marsha Norman opened on Broadway in 1983, earning the Tony Award for Best Play and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play takes place in real time, with no intermission or breaks in the action, to depict the unrelenting emotional exchange between Thelma and her daughter, Jessie, after Jessie announces that she plans to commit suicide. As Jessie sets her affairs in order, Thelma tries unsuccessfully to stop Jessie’s plan from... Read Night, Mother Summary

Published in 2008, Olive Kitteridge is an unconventional novel by Elizabeth Strout that interlinks 13 tales about the people of Crosby, Maine. The novel is a collection of short stories tied together by the unifying element of titular character Olive Kitteridge. The novel won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and HBO created a mini-series of the book in 2014. Because of its construction, Strout’s novel is less about its plot than it is about... Read Olive Kitteridge Summary

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Our Town (1938) is a three-act play written by American playwright Thornton Wilder. Wilder served in both World War I and World War II and wrote honestly about life in America. He wrote several plays but considered Our Town to be his best work. It was performed for the first time in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1938. Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Our Town, and the play is widely considered to be... Read Our Town Summary

When William Inge’s play Picnic opened on Broadway in 1953, it received much popular and critical acclaim. In the post-World War II era, in the face of rising paranoia and fear of communism, the televisions that had become fixtures in American homes broadcast idealized portrayals of small-town family life with shows such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), Make Room for Daddy (1953), Leave it to Beaver (1957), and The Donna Reed Show... Read Picnic Summary

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a personal narrative describing her observations of a creek near her home in Virginia over the course of a year. Dillard, a suburban housewife, uses a first-person narrative voice to describe her walks, paying homage to a tradition of nature writing while posing large questions about the nature of God and wilderness. The author blends research into the natural world, philosophical inquiry, and poetic imagery while engaging... Read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Summary

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David Auburn’s play, Proof, premiered in 1999 in New Jersey before moving to New York for an Off-Broadway run and a successful transfer to Broadway in 2000. The original Broadway cast starred Mary Louise Parker as Catherine, and subsequently attracted several other famous women to play the role. Proof received extensive critical acclaim, winning a Drama Desk Award for Best New Play in 2000 and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best... Read Proof Summary

Ruined, by Lynn Nottage, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, defies easy categorization. To some, the play is an unconventional love story set in a war zone, while to others, it is a melodrama warning society of the irreparable damage war can inflict upon women and men. Either way,Ruined is a play that sends a global political message no one can ignore: rape as a weapon of war is profoundly damaging, and a... Read Ruined Summary

So Long, See You Tomorrow is the acclaimed final novel by American writer and editor William Maxwell. Originally published in two parts in New Yorker magazine in 1979, the book appeared the following year and received the prestigious National Book Award in 1982. Maxwell was the fiction editor of the New Yorker from 1936 to 1975, making him one of the most influential literary editors of the era. He worked closely with J. D. Salinger... Read So Long, See You Tomorrow Summary

Swamplandia! is a 2011 novel by the American author Karen Russell. It is an adaptation of her short story “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” first published in the Summer 2006 issue of the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story and later collected in her 2006 book of short stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A Miami native, Russell uses magical... Read Swamplandia Summary

Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist is a literary fiction novel that follows the character-driven story of Macon Leary, who must navigate life following the death of his son and the dissolution of his marriage. The Accidental Tourist was originally published in 1985 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The Accidental Tourist is Anne Tyler’s 10th novel and one of her most recognized works. This study guide follows the paperback Berkley edition released in... Read The Accidental Tourist Summary

American writer Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Age Of Innocence (1920) was a post-armistice reflection on the 1870s New York society of her youth. Wharton, an American who lived abroad in Paris, was already the successful author of other novels, including The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911). In a The New York Times article, Elif Batuman reflects that “eventually, each classic tells two stories: its own, and the story of all... Read The Age of Innocence Summary

American writer Michael Chabon won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for his 2000 historical fiction novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The story unfolds in the period leading up to World War II and continues through the war years and beyond. The main characters are two Jewish cousins living in New York City, seeking success in the emerging comic book industry. One is the artist Josef Kavalier... Read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Summary

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a 2007 novel by the Dominican American author Junot Díaz. Its title character is a young overweight Dominican American man obsessed with fantasy novels, superhero comics, and tabletop role-playing games. Using Spanish neologisms, magical realism, and references to late-20th-century nerd culture, Díaz weaves a multigenerational family saga chronicling life under the murderous Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and the subsequent Dominican diaspora to the United States. Widely praised... Read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Summary

The Clean House, which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2004 and opened Off-Broadway in 2006, was the first major play by celebrated American playwright Sarah Ruhl, whose other widely recognized works include Eurydice (2004), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007), and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009). The Clean House received a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ruhl also earned... Read The Clean House Summary

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel—a novel told in letter form—in which Alice Walker traces the gradual liberation of Celie, a poor, Black woman who must overcome abuse and separation from her beloved sister Nettie. Set in the South and an unnamed African country during the 1930 to 1940s, the novel is a study in the ways in which Black women use their faith, relationships, and creativity to survive racial and sexual oppression. The... Read The Color Purple Summary

The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron, is a work of historical fiction that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. The first-person account of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt begins and ends in the prison where Nat Turner, an African American slave, was held before, during, and following his trial. Turner awaits execution as the leader of the two-day slave rebellion that started in Southampton County and ended with the death of approximately 55... Read The Confessions of Nat Turner Summary

The Corrections is a 2001 novel by Jonathan Franzen that won the National Book Award. Franzen is the author of several essay collections and novels, including the novels Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads. He has received many awards for his work, including the Whiting Award in 1988 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996.The main action of the novel takes place during the turn of the 21st century, a time of great financial prosperity in the United... Read The Corrections Summary

The Denial of Death was written by the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and published in 1973. The work explores the fear of death and the ways in which rituals and beliefs have helped humans to cope with it throughout history. It was inspired by the fact that Becker had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Over the course of his life, he taught at several prestigious universities, including Syracuse University, UC Berkeley, and, by... Read The Denial of Death Summary

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The Echo Maker (2006) is a psychological mystery thriller by American author Richard Powers. The novel follows protagonist Mark Schluter in the wake of an accidental brain injury that led him to believe that his sister, Karin, is an imposter. The resulting conflict leads to questions of meaning, perception, and identity. The author of 13 books as of 2023, Powers has won numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize in 2003, a National Book Award for... Read The Echo Maker Summary

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Donna Tartt’s 2013 novel, The Goldfinch, was a national best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. It follows the life of Theo Decker from his early teens into his late twenties. The novel is told in five parts and begins when Theo is hiding out in a hotel room in Amsterdam as an adult. It moves back in time and finally makes a circle back to his adulthood, explaining the reason for his stay... Read The Goldfinch Summary

Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Heidi Chronicles first opened Off-Broadway with Playwrights Horizons in 1988, transferring to Broadway for a successful run in 1989. The play follows Heidi Holland from the ages of 16 to 40 as she explores her desires for her own life, inspired by the liberation of feminism, but tempered by gendered expectations in a patriarchal society. Critics celebrated the play for introducing feminism into mainstream theater. Wasserstein wrote 11 plays, and The... Read The Heidi Chronicles Summary

The Hours is a 1998 novel by the American author Michael Cunningham. It is an homage to Virginia Woolf’s 1923 novel Mrs. Dalloway (of which the working title was “The Hours”). Mimicking Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style, Cunningham re-situates her characters and themes within a modern context, making them his own. The story follows three different women, in three different decades, affected by Mrs. Dalloway over the course of one June day in each of their... Read The Hours Summary

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Edward P. Jones’s novel The Known World, published in 2003 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2004), tells the interconnected stories of the people living at the antebellum Virginia plantation of Henry Townsend, a black slaveowner. The novel begins on the night of Henry’s death in 1855, but the story is not linear. The narrative seamlessly moves both backward in time to provide context for characters and forward in time to reveal characters’... Read The Known World Summary

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Like his 2016 bestseller, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Whitehead is only the fourth writer in history to win two Pulitzers). The Nickel Boys describes life in a reform school from the point of view of young Black teenager. Whitehead based Nickel Academy on the real life Dozier School, a Florida facility that ran for over a century, until a university investigation publicized its racist... Read The Nickel Boys Summary

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In The Old Man and the Sea, a 1952 adventure novella by American author Ernest Hemingway, an aging fisherman pits his life and wits against a giant fish as he battles to catch it and then protect its flesh from ravenous sharks. With its themes of endurance, perseverance, and respect for one’s opponent, this simple, straightforward narrative is widely regarded as an American classic and one of the greatest sea stories ever told.The book helped... Read The Old Man and the Sea Summary

Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter was published in 1972 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. Welty, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1906, originally wrote the The Optimist’s Daughter as a short story for The New Yorker, in which it was published in 1969. Welty is widely known as a Southern writer because her fiction is derived from the politics, people, and culture of the American South. Before becoming... Read The Optimist's Daughter Summary

The Orphan Master’s Son is the story of Jun Do, an “everyman” caught up in high-stakes politics in a fictionalized version of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As the son of the orphan master, Jun Do grows up among orphans and bears a martyr’s name, experiences which follow him throughout his life. During a period of national famine, Jun Do and the orphans are sent to join the army. As the head of an... Read The Orphan Master's Son Summary

The Overstory is a 2018 novel by Richard Powers. Weaving together numerous character narratives, it is the story of a collection of environmental activists and their struggles to make their protests heard by society. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.Plot SummaryThe Hoel family are descended from Norwegian immigrants who moved from New York to a farm in Iowa. Nicolas Hoel, a young artist who lacks direction returns home for Christmas and finds his... Read The Overstory Summary

IntroductionAugust Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson premiered in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theatre starring a young, unknown Samuel L. Jackson as Boy Willie. The play opened on Broadway in 1990 with Charles S. Dutton (Boy Willie), S. Epatha Merkerson (Berniece), and Jackson in his Broadway debut as Dutton’s understudy; it earned five Tony nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play award. It also won the... Read The Piano Lesson Summary

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The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) is a non-fiction book written by American historian and Brown University professor Gordon S. Wood. Most revolutions are an act of violence that result in deaths, property destruction, and a world turned upside down. Americans do not see the American Revolution this way. The American founding fathers were educated men who wrote pamphlets and spoke openly in legislative halls. As the story goes, they were gentlemen, not radicals... Read The Radicalism of the American Revolution Summary

The Road is a dystopian fiction novel published in 2006 by the American author Cormac McCarthy. It takes place in a barren, post-apocalyptic American wasteland over the course of a change from late fall to winter. As a view of America’s future, the novel is bleak and features very few consolations. The primary characters, named only “the man” and “the boy,” are distinguished by their will to survive, and the plot is therefore pared down... Read The Road Summary

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by American journalist Nicholas Carr has its roots in Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” which was published in The Atlantic in 2008. The book was first published in the UK with the title The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. It investigates the effects the Internet has on the brain with a central thesis that reading... Read The Shallows Summary

Thornton Wilder’s dramatic masterpiece, The Skin of Our Teeth, opened on Broadway in November of 1942, less than a year after the United States entered World War II. On the heels of the Great Depression (1929-1939), the war meant more sacrifice and hardship for the average American family, and another era of fear, loss, and anxiety about the future of humanity. The play is a satirical allegory for the human race’s seemingly indomitable will to... Read The Skin of Our Teeth Summary

Written in 1993, The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields is the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, whose life story plays out in North America and spans much of the 20th century. The novel claims to be Daisy’s retelling of her life story, but it includes other characters’ voices and points of view, thus satirizing fiction and storytelling itself. By including a family tree and “real” family photographs, the novel explores the difference between reality... Read The Stone Diaries Summary

The Sympathizer is an historical spy novel told in the first-person by an unnamed half-French, half-Vietnamese narrator. The story unfolds as the narrator’s confession to a man referred to as the Commandant. The narrator begins his story with the fall of Saigon, where he is the aide-de-camp to a high-ranking General in the Special Branch, the central intelligence organization of the anti-Communist South Vietnamese Army. Quickly, we learn that the narrator is not all he appears... Read The Sympathizer Summary

The Underground Railroad, a 2016 historical fiction novel by Colson Whitehead, takes place in the early 19th century in Georgia and chronicles the life of protagonist Cora, Ajarry’s grandchild. Interspersed in the narrative are chapters that follow other characters in the same way the beginning of the book depicts Ajarry’s life. These diverse characters—including Cora’s mother Mabel, Caesar, Ethel Wells, and Ridgeway—have meaningful roles in Cora’s story.The most prominent theme in this book is that... Read The Underground Railroad Summary

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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published The Yearling in 1938 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. Maxwell Perkins, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, edited the novel. The Yearling traces one year in the life of Jody Baxter, chronicling his family’s hardships as they endure floods, plague, and death—and Jody’s tender relationship with an orphaned fawn. The novel became a bestseller in 1938 and has since been translated into 29 languages. In... Read The Yearling Summary

Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, explores her experiences mourning the death of her husband and the severe illness of her daughter in 2003. Didion, an American journalist and essayist, first gained popularity during the 1960s and 70s covering counterculture and Hollywood, but in The Year of Magical Thinking she turns to more intimate material. Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne died of a heart attack while he and Didion were caring for their... Read The Year of Magical Thinking Summary

Tinkers (2009) is Paul Harding’s debut novel. It delves into the life of a dying man, George Washington Crosby, as he reflects on his past and his family history. The narrative weaves together George’s memories with stories from his father’s life, and it explores the themes of mortality, memory, and the interconnectedness of generations. The novel, which is considered literary fiction, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2010 PEN/ Robert W. Bingham... Read Tinkers Summary

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel written by Harper Lee and originally published in 1960. The book is widely regarded as an American classic and, until recently, was the only novel Lee had published. To Kill a Mockingbird was inspired by events and observations that took place in Lee’s hometown. Set in the Great Depression, from 1932 to 1935, the novel is narrated by a young girl named Scout, whose coming-of-age experiences closely mirror... Read To Kill a Mockingbird Summary

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Trust Exercise (2019), a literary fiction novel by Susan Choi, centers on two high school students who fall in love. As the plot develops, it becomes obvious that the relationship is not at all that it seems. Although Trust Exercise received mixed reviews from readers, critics praise the novel for challenging preconceived ideas of what a novel should be. It won the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. Choi is a best-selling, award-winning novelist who typically writes literary... Read Trust Exercise Summary

Two Trains Running by August Wilson first opened in 1990 at the Yale Repertory Theatre with Samuel L. Jackson as Wolf and Laurence Fishburne playing Sterling. The play premiered on Broadway in 1992, receiving four Tony nominations in 1992 including Best Play. Two Trains Running is a part of Wilson’s Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, which consists of 10 plays: one for each decade of the 20th century, each depicting the changing... Read Two Trains Running Summary

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Wit—sometimes spelled as W;t—is a Pulitzer-Prize winning play by Margaret Edson first published in 1995. The play follows the story of Dr. Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old professor of 17th-century poetry who has recently been diagnosed with stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer. The plot itself is nonlinear; for example, the opening scene of the play takes place two hours before Vivian dies, but the play switches between Vivian’s childhood, career, and treatment milestones to tell her whole... Read Wit Summary