The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday.
Adam Johnson's "The Orphan Master's Son," a labyrinthine story of a man's travails in North Korea, has won the award for fiction, restoring a high literary honor a year after no fiction prize was given.
Booksellers and publishers had been surprised and angered in 2012 when Pulitzer officials decided for the first time in decades not to give a fiction prize, which usually results in a quick and sustained boost in sales. There was no clear favorite Monday for fiction, with Louise Erdrich's "The Round House" and a pair of novels about the Iraq war, Ben Fountain's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and Kevin Powers' "The Yellow Birds," among those receiving strong attention.
Here is a complete list of the winners of letters and drama prizes in the arts categories:
Fiction: "The Orphan Master's Son," by 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.
Drama: "Disgraced," by Ayad Akhtar, a play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage.
History: "Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam," by Fredrik Logevall, a balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.
Biography: "The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo," by Tom Reiss, a compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.
Poetry: "Stag's Leap," by Sharon Olds, a book of unflinching poems on the author's divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.
General nonfiction: "Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America," by Gilbert King, a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle.
Prize in music: Caroline Shaw for "Partita for 8 Voices," recording released on October 30, 2012, a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.