The Pulitzer Prize -- Fiction Pt. 3
Explore the prestigious Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction books in Part 3 of our series. Discover acclaimed novels that have earned this literary honor and shaped modern literature.
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The Way West
by Alfred Bertram Guthrie (Jr.)
An enormously entertaining classic, THE WAY WEST brings to life the adventure of the western passage and the pioneer spirit. The sequel to THE BIG SKY, this celebrated novel charts a frontiersman's return to the untamed West in 1846. Dick Summers, as pilot of a wagon train, guides a group of settlers on the difficult journey from Missouri to Oregon. In sensitive but unsentimental prose, Guthrie illuminates the harsh trials and resounding triumphs of pioneer life. With THE WAY WEST, he pays homage to the grandeur of the western wilderness, its stark and beautiful scenery, and its extraordinary people.
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Guard of Honor
by James Gould Cozzens
Guard of Honor is a neglected masterpiece that stands comparison with the greatest novels of the Second World War--essayist Noel Perrin deemed it "probably the best war novel of the twentieth century." James Gould Cozzens's Guard of Honor won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. The novel balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days in September 1943 to a racial incident on a U.S. Army airbase in Florida. The reader is acutely aware of the war raging abroad and the effect it has had, or will have, on the multitude of servicemen who populate Cozzens's immense canvas. As Noel Perrin commented in The Washington Post Book World: "There is material for two or three hundred movies in Guard of Honor." "No other American novelist of our time writes with such profound understanding of the wellsprings of human character and of the social pressures that help to form it," said Orville Prescott in The New York Times. As Brendan Gill observed in The New Yorker "Every page of Guard of Honor gives the impression of a writer at the very top of his powers setting out to accomplish nothing less than his masterwork."
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Tales of the South Pacific
by James Albert Michener
"Truly one of the most remarkable books to come out of the war. Mr. Michener is a born story-teller." THE NEW YORK TIMES Winner of the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Enter the exotic world of the South Pacific, meet the men and women caught up in the drama of a big war. The young Marine who falls madly in love with a beautiful Tonkinese girl. Nurse Nellie and her French planter, Emile De Becque. The soldiers, sailors, and nurses playing at war and waiting for love in a tropic paradise.
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All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren
Character study of a Southern demagogue whose career follows in some respects as that of Huey Long.
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A Bell for Adano
by John Hersey
This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey's story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity.
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Journey in the Dark
by Martin Flavin
The story of a boy who grew up in a poor family and his adventures in love and business.
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Dragon's Teeth
by Upton Sinclair
N the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd's financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny's socialist ideals -- much to the chagrin of his heiress wife, Irma, a confirmed capitalist. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism. His concern over the growing popularity of the Nazi Party escalates when he meets Adolf Hitler, the group's fanatical leader, and the members of his inner circle. But Lanny's gravest fear is the threat a national socialist government poses to the German Jewish family of Hansi, the musician husband of Lanny's sister, Bess -- a threat that will impel the international art dealer to risk his wealth, his future, even his life in a courageous attempt to rescue his loved ones from a terrible fate.
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In this Our Life
by Ellen Glasgow
Stanley Timberlake is a young woman who decides to dump her fiancé and runs off with her sister Roy's husband. They marry, settle in Baltimore, and Stanley ultimately drives Peter to drink and suicide. Stanley returns home to Richmond only to learn that her sister Roy and old flame Craig have fallen in love and plan to marry. The jealous and selfish Stanley attempts to win back Craig's affections, but her true character is revealed when, rather than take the rap herself, she attempts to pin a hit and run accident on a young black clerk who works in Craig's law office.
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics. This Centennial edition, specially designed to commemorate one hundred years of Steinbeck, features french flaps and deckle-edged pages. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Yearling
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Relive the wonder of this childhood favorite and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that has been capturing the hearts of readers for more than half a century. An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this beloved tale has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In this classic story of the Baxter family and their wild, hard, and satisfying life in remote central Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has written one of the great novels of our times. A rich and varied tale—tender in its understanding of boyhood, crowded with the excitement of the backwoods hunt, with vivid descriptions of the primitive, beautiful hammock country, written with humor and earthy philosophy—The Yearling is a novel for readers of all ages. Its glowing picture of a life refreshingly removed from modern patterns of living is universal in its revelation of simple courageous people and the beliefs they must live by. This edition, complete with a new introduction by author Ivan Doig, will be cherished for years to come and will make a welcome addition to any booklover's shelf.
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The Late George Apley
by John P. Marquand
A modern classic restored to print -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that charts the diminishing fortunes of a distinguished Boston family in the early years of the 20th century. Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, the novel gives us -- through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley -- the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world -- and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.
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Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
The classic civil war romanctic tale of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler and the Civil War conflict.
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The Store
by Thomas Sigismund Stribling
Traces the lives of the Vaiden family of the Florence and Lauderdale County area, addressing many topics considered taboo in the South.
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Scarlet Sister Mary
by Julia Mood Peterkin
Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African-American experience. In her novels and stories, she taps the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder
This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition. This new edition of Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel contains a new foreword by Russell Banks.
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Arrowsmith
by Sinclair Lewis
A man of science must overcome public ignorance and the petty greed of associates as he seeks knowledge.
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So Big
by Edna Ferber
Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.
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The Able McLaughlins
by Margaret Wilson
"This is the story of a Scotch community in the Middle West during the 1860's ... who left their native land and settled on the incredible prairie, acres from which no frontiersman need ever cut a tree. It is also a love story of Wully and Christie, set against the conflict of customs of the old world and the new."--Back cover