NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan, one of three jurors on the panel that narrowed the 300-book fiction field to three finalists, was openly critical of the Pulitzer Prize Board for failing to award a prize for fiction. "The Pulitzer is too prestigious and crucial an award to book lovers, authors and the publishing industry to be sporadically -- and unaccountably -- withheld," Corrigan wrote in the Washington Post shortly after the awards were announced.
The Pulitzer Prize is sort of an Academy Award for authors - a career-defining, zeitgeist-bestowing, income-enhancing marker that ensures your calls and emails will get returned for at least the next few years. Since Las Vegas odds-makers and red carpet hosts aren't particularly interested in the Nerd Oscars, here's a look at some of the books and authors who are generating the most buzz ahead of this year's Pulitzer Prizes.
The Pulitzers are the last of the major annual book awards to be announced for the publishing year, so the winners tend to be known quantities. Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf), Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) all won the National Book Critics Circle Award en route to Pulitzers. All but one Pulitzer for fiction since 2000 have been awarded to books published by a Big Six publisher, so most winners have had considerable marketing dollars behind them and a considerable number of copies in print.
First, let's knock out three of the most praised books of the year on technicalities. The Pulitzer for fiction is limited to American authors (how rude!), so Alice Munro's much-loved short story collection Dear Life (Knopf) is out because Munro is -- wait for it -- Canadian. Also out: UK's Hilary Mantel, who wrote the Booker Prize-winning Anne Boleyn novel, Bring Up the Bodies (Henry Holt), and Zadie Smith, who wrote the London-set NBCC finalist NW (Penguin).
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The Pulitzer Prize is sort of an Academy Award for authors - a career-defining, zeitgeist-bestowing, income-enhancing marker that ensures your calls and emails will get returned for at least the next few years. Since Las Vegas odds-makers and red carpet hosts aren't particularly interested in the Nerd Oscars, here's a look at some of the books and authors who are generating the most buzz ahead of this year's Pulitzer Prizes.
The Pulitzers are the last of the major annual book awards to be announced for the publishing year, so the winners tend to be known quantities. Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf), Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) all won the National Book Critics Circle Award en route to Pulitzers. All but one Pulitzer for fiction since 2000 have been awarded to books published by a Big Six publisher, so most winners have had considerable marketing dollars behind them and a considerable number of copies in print.
First, let's knock out three of the most praised books of the year on technicalities. The Pulitzer for fiction is limited to American authors (how rude!), so Alice Munro's much-loved short story collection Dear Life (Knopf) is out because Munro is -- wait for it -- Canadian. Also out: UK's Hilary Mantel, who wrote the Booker Prize-winning Anne Boleyn novel, Bring Up the Bodies (Henry Holt), and Zadie Smith, who wrote the London-set NBCC finalist NW (Penguin).
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