The Pulitzer Prize winners for titles published in 2023 were announced on May 6th of this year, recognizing excellence in journalism, books, drama, and music across 22 categories.
Here are some winners and finalists available to borrow with your Livingston Library card in book or ebook format:
Fiction
Winner
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
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.
Finalists
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
An inventive postmodern novel that moves from the brutal Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula to a lonely Korean American boy’s passion for the Buffalo Sabres, interlinked narratives that jump historical and imaginary time zones with humor, sorrow and irreverence.
Wednesday’s Child : Stories by Yiyun Li
An affecting volume of thematically and stylistically connected stories that are set around tasks carried out by caretakers of the infirm and mothers struggling to carry on after the death of a child, work that mixes grief with gentle humor.
History
Winner
No Right to An Honest Living : The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers In the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones
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.
Finalists
American Anarchy : The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Michael Willrich
A riveting and beautifully written story of how anarchists and their lawyers remade American law, with profound implications for modern jurisprudence, and prompting serious reflection on the meaning and limits of democracy.
Continental Reckoning : The American West in the Age of Expansion by Elliott West
A masterly crafted and comprehensive narrative of how our nation’s history unfolded across the American West and how the West, no less than the Civil War, profoundly shaped the rise of modern America.
Biography
Winner
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
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
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.
Finalist
Larry McMurtry : A Life by Tracy Daugherty
An insightful literary biography of the celebrated author written with brio and humor that evokes the Depression-era Texas of his youth and the myth of the American West that he dedicated himself to exposing.
Memoir or Autobiography
Winner
Liliana’s Invincible Summer : A Sister’s Search For Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza
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.
Finalists
The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen
An account of the author’s brilliant childhood best friend and fellow student who was diagnosed as schizophrenic before fatally stabbing his girlfriend, a tragedy used to explore mental illness and the history of institutionalization.
The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland
An emotionally resonant account by an author losing his eyesight from a rare genetic disorder, a memoir that explores the physical and conceptual experience of blindness, and that explains honestly how ableism fueled his reticence to accept his diagnosis.
General Nonfiction
Winner
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall
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.
Finalists
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
A powerful examination of mining operations in the Southeastern Congo that reveals a global system of modern-day slavery, and the inhumane, often deadly working conditions for the men, women and children who extract the rare metal required for smartphones, computers and electric vehicles.
Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant
An unsparing account of the rapacious Alberta Sands fire, fueled by an overheated atmosphere, dry forest and omnipresent petroleum products, that consumed the town of Fort McMurray at the heart of Canada’s oil industry, which brings the global crisis of carbon emissions and climate change into urgent relief.
—Archana Chiplunkar, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian
