2013 Literary Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

At an ceremony today at Columbia University, the 2013 literary Pulitzer Prizes were handed out by the official board.

Aside from the gold medal and bragging rights, the winners of the 2013 Pulitzer Prizes will be honored at a luncheon on May 30 - and also receive $10,000.

Adam Johnson, author of THE ORPHAN MASTER' SON, took the top fiction honor. The novel, published by Random House, is officially described as, "Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother-a singer "stolen" to Pyongyang-and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the state soon recognize the boy's loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself "a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world," Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress "so pure, she didn't know what starving people looked like."

In nonfiction, Gilbert King was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book DEVIL IN THE GROVE, from Harper-Collins. The literary piece follows "arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life."

Tom Reiss' THE BLACK COUNT, the acclaimed recount of the man who inspired THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, won the prize for biography or autobiography. THE BLACK COUNT tells "the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo - a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time."

Finally, Fredrik Logevall was awarded the prize for history for his Vietnam War examination EMBERS OF WAR, published by Random House. The book depicts "the struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world's powers and saw two of them-first France, then the United States-attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day."