Yiyun Li's novel about the friendship of two girls in post-World War II France, “The Book of Goose,” and Dionne Irving's “The Islands,” a story collection set everywhere from London to New Jersey, are among the finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
The other three nominees announced Tuesday by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation are all debut works: Laura Warrell's polyphonic novel “Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm"; Jonathan Escoffery's stories of a Jamaican immigrant family, “If I Survive You"; and Kathryn Harlan's sometimes fantastical stories of women in a world imperiled by climate change, “Fruiting Bodies.”
“With settings that range from Jamaica to Boston to postwar France to realms of the uncanny, this year’s finalists manage to make even familiar worlds feel mysteriously new,” PEN/Faulkner Awards Committee Chair Louis Bayard said in a statement. “Whether writing in the long or short form, they offer us the gift of deeply examined humanity, as well as definitive evidence that American fiction has lost none of its power to enchant and illuminate.”
The winner of the $15,000 prize will be announced in early April. Previous recipients include Philip Roth, Ann Patchett and Deesha Philyaw.
