Skip to footer

Pulitzer Prize 2015 winners include 'All the Light We Cannot See,' 'The Sixth Extinction'

Monitor staff named 'Light' as one of the best books of 2014.

The 2015 Pulitzer Prizes for fiction and nonfiction went to 'All the Light We Cannot See' and 'The Sixth Extinction,' respectively.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

The winners for the 2015 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday and the big win in the books category – the prize for best fiction – was perhaps the least surprising book news of the year. 

Acclaimed novel “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr is now the latest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “Light,” which is set during World War II, follows a French girl who is blind and may be in possession of a precious jewel, intertwining her story with that of a German boy with a talent for radios. The Monitor named “Light” as one of the best fiction books of 2014, with Monitor fiction critic Yvonne Zipp saying that it “may be Doerr’s best work to date.” The book was also a National Book Award nominee and has already spent 38 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

The Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction went to Elizabeth Kolbert’s work “The Sixth Extinction,” another book that has been the recipient of considerable attention and praise. In the book, Kolbert, a New Yorker writer, posits that a "sixth extinction" – a disaster similar to that which destroyed the dinosaurs – may be coming soon to planet Earth. The book was also a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and was on the shortlist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Meanwhile, the history prize went to Elizabeth A. Fenn’s title “Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People,” while the drama award went to Stephen Adly Guirgis’s work “Between Riverside and Crazy” and the poetry award went to Gregory Pardlo’s “Digest.”

The biography prize went to the book “The Pope and Mussolini,” by David I. Kertzer. Monitor writer Randy Dotinga called “Pope” “stunning" and "remarkable.” In an interview with the Monitor, Kertzer discussed the narrative of his book.

“We see things retrospectively in terms of where fascism ended up,” Kertzer said. “But under Pius XI, fascism was totally new, an Italian invention headed by Mussolini – a bunch of former left-wingers who became fascists at the end of the first world war. As for the church, things were very different than they are now, post-Vatican Council. It's not all that long ago when there was really a much more authoritarian, medieval vision in the Vatican and the church.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Pulitzer Prize 2015 winners include 'All the Light We Cannot See,' 'The Sixth Extinction'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0421/Pulitzer-Prize-2015-winners-include-All-the-Light-We-Cannot-See-The-Sixth-Extinction
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe