(Images from Amazon)
NEW YORK (AP) | Openly gay author Garth Greenwell’s “Small Rain,” a novel about a medical crisis that brings one man close to death, as well as to love, art and beauty, is a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
“Small Rain” has also been long-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Financial Times, New Statesman, Vox, Elle, Publishers Weekly and BookPage.
Also selected as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction is “James,” Percival Everett’s acclaimed reworking of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Everett’s version of Mark Twain’s classic, now narrated by the enslaved title character, already won the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize and the Carnegie Medal for fiction.
The other nominees announced March 3 are ’Pemi Aguda’s “Ghostroots,” Susan Muaddi Darraj’s “Behind You Is the Sea” and Danzy Senna’s “Colored Television.”
“These five books moved us with their compassion, their imagination, their quiet artistry,” according to a statement from the judging panel. “They view our world from oblique and unsettling angles while giving us new ways to comprehend the often unimaginable: illness, displacement, enslavement, exile. Yet they also burst with humor and light, with characters who gleam and sing from the page.”
The winner will be announced in early April. First prize comes with a $15,000 cash award. Runners-up each receive $5,000. Previous honorees include Philip Roth, Ann Patchett and Yiyun Li.
