James McBride wins fiction prize for ‘The Good Lord Bird’.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Popular finalist Jhumpa Lahiri has lost out on the 2013 National Book Award for fiction, with the award instead going to James McBride.
Lahiri, the Indian American author responsible for the 2003 novel “The Namesake,” was in the running for her sprawling, multi-generational tome “The Lowland.” She was not the only heavyweight in contention for the prize – Thomas Pynchon was up for “Bleeding Edge” and George Saunders was listed for “Tenth of December – but ultimately, the underdog prevailed.
In fact, McBride also considered himself to be an underdog, so much so that he didn’t even prepare an acceptance speech. The novel he won for is “The Good Lord Bird,” which takes place during the horrific period of American slavery.
The topic of slavery has recently seen a resurgence in both written and filmed media. Last year’s Django Unchained ended up winning two Academy Awards, and this year’s 12 Years a Slave expected to be a major awards season contender.
The National Book Award is the second major literary prize of the year that Lahiri has lost out on, having also failed to receive the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. That award went to Eleanor Catton’s epic “The Luminaries.”
But that doesn’t mean Lahiri is a stranger to literary plaudits. Her debut work, a short-story collection entitled “Interpreter of Maladies,” won her the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, considered by many to be the highest honor in the literary world. Her novel “The Namesake” was also a great critical and commercial success, and was adapted into a successful film in 2007.
Lahiri’s “The Lowland” has garnered largely positive reviews from literary critics, with the general consensus being that it’s easily her most ambitious book yet, and a notable departure from her typically more intimate stories of the past. Nevertheless, the story still deals with themes familiar to Lahiri’s writing, such as Indian-American families, cultural disparity between the east and west, and the clash between tradition and modernity.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com