On May 6th, another deserving individual will be inducted into a club that I would commit felonies to gain entry to: the Pulitzer Prize winners. There’s to be a whole tea set given away on the day – prizes for poetry, memoir, photography, journalism, music, and more. Part of the award’s appeal is undoubtedly the mystery of it all. Yes, we know the date the decision will be announced, but until then we’ll have no idea which novels made the longlist or the shortlist, or even the members of the deciding jury. Every ‘serious’ writer with a book out in the last year will secretly be thinking: maybe, just maybe.

And they’d be right to have their hopes up – anything can happen. In 2020, Colson Whitehead won for The Nickel Boys just three years after winning in 2017 for The Underground Railroad. In 2010, Paul Harding’s Tinkers shocked everyone by clinching the top prize – The New York Times hadn’t even reviewed the book before it won the most prestigious literary award in the land.

“Old or young, Black or white, male or female, the winner could be any of us - and in time, it may be all of us”

The prize is truly a reflection of the American Dream. Old or young, Black or white, male or female, the winner could be any of us – in time, it may be all of us. We all have a shot to secure our spot among Roth, Hemingway and Faulkner, as chief interpreters of that ephemeral and unknowable thing called the human condition.

Only this isn’t completely true. The one thing that we know for sure about this year’s lucky winner is that they will be an American citizen. When I found out about this caveat a few years ago, I fell to my knees, struck by my own poor, dumb luck of not being an American (that’s not a sentence you hear every day). But before I fully internalised this cringing self-defeat, there was news in the world of Pulitzer. Starting in 2025, winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction no longer have to be American citizens. This decision was made by the board in response to an open letter, urging them to be more flexible with their approach to what it means to be an American. The new rule could now include undocumented and immigrant writers, like the poet Javier Zamora, whose undocumented status disallowed him from being considered for his 2022 memoir, Solito, despite the fact he had lived in the US for 19 years.

“Works that made me appreciate that there’s often something in writing that cannot be taught”

So, to say farewell to this passing era of the Pulitzer Prize, I thought I’d offer my two cents on the best Pulitzer winners I’ve read. I also consider all of these books as some of the greatest novels I’ve read – works that made me appreciate that there’s often something in writing that cannot be taught. Toni Morrison had that something. Beloved (published 1987, prized 1988) is categorically one of the greatest novels ever written. Morrison constructs a family from former enslaved people who move to Cincinnati after the US Civil War. The supernatural element that comes in makes it – dare I say – an underrated contribution to the horror genre. It’s chilling, it’s warming, and it carries such a noxious and destabilising energy that I remember sitting in Elvis’ Graceland, feeling a dizzying fever overtake me because of the novel’s sheer power. Don’t walk – run.

“It’s the book I buy extra copies of when I see it in charity shops just so I can gift it to others”

Jumping to the 2011 cycle, I’m recommending the work of a Cambridge alumna with Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. Highly entertaining and accessible, yet profound and incisive, this one does pretty much precisely what any novel should. Though it’s comprised of thirteen stories following a nexus of complex characters, is set over several decades, and spans continents, Egan never shies from the challenge. She renders each little life with such attention and care, in order to promote empathy on the part of the reader for every flawed, fragmented figure. Read it, if only to find out who the titular Goon Squad is.

Lastly, I’ll circle back to 1981 to promote my darling. It’s the book I suggest to everyone. It’s the book I buy extra copies of when I see it in charity shops just so I can gift it to others. It’s John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. One of my favourite things in media is when the setting is such a significant presence that it almost becomes another character – like New York in Sex and the City, or Leith in Trainspotting. In Dunces, it’s that great American city: New Orleans. Tennessee Williams apparently once said that there are only three cities in America: New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco – everywhere else is Cleveland. Pick Dunces up for NOLA; stay for the picaresque madness of its plot and its iconic, slob-saint of a main character, Ignatius J Reilly, as he rides Fortuna’s revolving wheel.

I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground to see which deserving writer gets to join the legions of heavyweight publications like these. As for the next book on my to-be-read list: I’ll know by May 6th.