NEW YORK (AP) — Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See,” a World War II novel that has been one of the top-selling literary works of the past year, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Pulitzer judges on Monday cited Doerr’s “imaginative and intricate novel,” which alternates brief chapters between a blind French girl and young Nazi soldier. Doerr, fittingly, was in Paris when the award was announced. A resident of Idaho, Doerr needed more than a decade to complete the book, more time than the war itself. He told The Associated Press that there were days when he thought “he would never finish the book” and was especially surprised by his Pulitzer since the book “contains no Americans.”
“Obviously, it’s wonderful,” he said of the prize, adding that he was enjoying ice cream with his family when his editor called to share the news.
Also Monday, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Between Riverside and Crazy” won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, with judges hailing the New York playwright for using “dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.” The Pulitzer for general nonfiction went to “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,” by Elizabeth Kolbert, whose work was praised by judges as “an exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity.”
David I. Kertzer’s “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe” won for biography-autobiography, and “Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People ” by Elizabeth A. Fenn, won for history.
The poetry prize was given to Gregory Pardlo’s “Digest” and Julia Wolfe’s “Anthracite Fields” won for music.
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