Today the Pulitzer Prizes were announced.

A couple days ago I shared my prediction for the Fiction category in Pulitzer Prediction 2016.

I left out one potential Pulitzer winner in my review as I had not scanned the cover of it after I was finished. The covers in this post come from my library’s catalog.

Of course, the book that I left out was the one that won the Fiction category this year.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen was the winner of the Fiction award.

If I would have included this one in my prediction post I would have said that it meets my criteria for a Pulitzer since a good portion of the book does take place in America and that it explores an important issues dealing with refugees entering our society. This is definitely an issue that we are currently dealing with as we accept refugees from another war torn country.

I did enjoy this book and among the books that I read it would have been my fourth choice for the Pulitzer.

Of course, two Finalists were also announced today.

I was not surprised that I had not heard of the two finalists. There seems to be a trend that the jury will select two less prominent books along with their favorite.

Of course, I now have both of the books on request from the library.

I am looking forward to reading Maud’s Line by Margaret Verble. The book deals with relations between Indians and the Federal Government in Oklahoma at the time Oklahoma became a state. 

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link is a collection of short stories. I do plan on reading the book, as along with having read all the Pulitzer Fiction winners I also plan on reading all of the Finalists someday. I should put my list together 🙂

However, this is a book that I do not believe meets Pulitzer’s original intent for the Pulitzer Prize. In this case all of the stories were written prior to 2015 and all of them had been published before. Definitely not “the American novel published during the year…”  My belief is that the prize should honor an original work that is  published during the year the award is given for, not something that has been previously published.

Have you read The Sympathizer?

Steven