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The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction

Finalist: The Sport of Kings, by C. E. Morgan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

For a daring novel that explores race, the burden of history and other themes of American life on a vast and imaginative canvas.

Nominated Work

The Sport of Kings

By

C.E. Morgan

Hellsmouth, an indomitable Thoroughbred with the blood of Triple Crown winners in her veins, runs for the glory of the Forge family, one of Kentucky’s oldest and most powerful dynasties. Henry Forge has partnered with his daughter, Henrietta, in an endeavor of raw obsession: to breed the next superhorse, the next Secretariat. But when Allmon Shaughnessy, an ambitious young black man, comes to work on their farm, the violence of the Forges’ history and the exigencies of appetite are brought starkly into view. Entangled in fear, prejudice, and lust, the three tether their personal dreams of glory to the speed and grace of Hellsmouth.

A spiraling tale of wealth and poverty, racism and rage, The Sport of Kings is an unflinching portrait of lives cast in shadow by the enduring legacy of slavery. C. E. Morgan, who received a 2016 Windham–Campbell Prize for Fiction, has given life to a tale as mythic and fraught as the South itself—a moral epic for our time.

-- from the publisher

Biography

C. E. Morgan lives with her husband, Will Guild, in Berea, Kentucky. She is the author of All the Living.

Winners

Prize Winner in Fiction in 2017:

Colson Whitehead

For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America. Fiction

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Fiction in 2017:

Adam Haslett

For the quiet and compassionate saga of a family whose world is shaped by mental illness and the challenges and joys of caring for each other.

The Jury

Eric Banks(Chair)

Director

Lan Samantha Chang

Director and May Brodbeck Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Mary Ann Gwinn*

Book Editor

Winners in Fiction

2016

Viet Thanh Nguyen

A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.
2015

Anthony Doerr

An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.
2014

Donna Tartt

A beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters that follows a grieving boy's entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction, a book that stimulates the mind and touches the heart.
2013

Adam Johnson

An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.
See All Fiction

2017 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

C. J. Chivers

For showing, through an artful accumulation of fact and detail, that a Marine’s postwar descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD.
Commentary

Peggy Noonan

For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.
Criticism

Hilton Als

For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.
Editorial Writing

Art Cullen

For editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.
See All 2017 Winners