Percival Everett's James wins the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
James, Percival Everett's retelling of Huckleberry Finn, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, adding to its National Book Award.
Percival Everett's James has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The prizes were announced on 5 May 2025. The novel, published in the United States by Doubleday and in the UK by Mantle, retells Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, who becomes the narrator and central figure.
The fiction finalists were Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking), Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine (Verse Chorus Press) and The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press).
The Pulitzer follows the National Book Award for Fiction, which James won in November 2024. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Why it matters: it is unusual for one novel to take both of the main American fiction prizes, and the result confirms James as one of the defining novels of its year. The finalist list is worth noting too: two of the three came from independent presses, not from the largest houses.
Sources: Wikipedia: 2025 Pulitzer Prize; Pan Macmillan: Percival Everett's James wins the Pulitzer Prize.