The Award - by Matthew Pearl (Hardcover)

About the Book

"David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him--until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices"--

Book Synopsis

"The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl's addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller."--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can't Win and Mrs. Fletcher

"A propulsive and gripping novel about the literary world, ambition, deception and murder and the twisted corner where they all intersect. Matthew Pearl grabs you from the first sentence and doesn't let go."--Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night We Lost Him

The author of Save Our Souls and The Dante Club makes his eagerly awaited return to fiction with this irreverent and propulsive novel about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene that turns deadly.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.

He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.

Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.

Suddenly Silas is interested--if intensely spiteful.

But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.

Fate intervenes--with shocking consequences. . . .

With the wit and psychological wisdom of The Plot and The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.

Review Quotes

"Not only did Matthew Pearl's clear and vivid writing immediately sweep me up in a father's fear, it pulled me into a larger and even more profound story, one that would change the course of three nations--one young, two ancient, all fighting for survival." - Candice Millard, bestselling author of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, on The Taking of Jemima Boone
"It seemed Jemima Boone's fate to be taken hostage--if not by Kentucky Indians then by fiction and legend. Even a cousin had a go at her story, in verse. Sensitively and eloquently, writing his way around the silences, Matthew Pearl rescues her at last. Fearlessness seemed to run in the family; Jemima could neither read nor write, yet had an uncanny ability to communicate with her father, conspiring with him from a distance, assisting with his rescue, under gunfire, at close hand. A rousing tale of frontier daring and ingenuity, better than legend on every front."
- Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, on The Taking of Jemima Boone
"A fascinating picture of frontier Kentucky. . . . The story of Jemima's abduction, an exciting and revealing episode in the history of America's westward expansion, deserves to be retold. To his credit, Pearl resists oversimplifying a history that has been too often presented as a frontier romance, showing us that it is as much about the women, children and Native Americans who played a part in it as the famous men who ensured it would be remembered." - New York Times Book Review on The Taking of Jemima Boone
"You are a castaway on a coral atoll, and you find a Man Friday--only he turns out to be a convicted murderer--oh, what a story! Matthew Pearl tells it, this dark tale of the 1887 wreck of the Wandering Minstrel with flair and aplomb: transfixingly brilliant." - Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of Knowing What We Know, on Save Our Souls
"Pearl unfolds this tale with suspense. . . . His telling is notable both for its uncanny parallels to the apocryphal Swiss Family Robinson story that predated it and because the real-life shipwreck of Captain Frederick Walker, his wife and their sons was more dire than Disney's idyllic fantasy. Pearl renders clear connections to the fictional story while writing a real-life adventure full of deceit, villainy and murderous plotting. . . . As grounded in the 19th century as it is, Pearl's take on the story of the castaways of the Wandering Minstrel also feels apt for our present moment--more Lord of the Flies than Swiss Family Robinson." - Los Angeles Times on Save Our Souls
"Save Our Souls is a story, not a study. The distinction is vital. You get to know these people and their relationships with each other. You live and die with every near-rescue that isn't. Most important, you keep turning the page." - Boston Globe on Save Our Souls
"A darkly entertaining satire set in present-day Cambridge, Mass., The Award by Matthew Pearl tells the story of an unscrupulous writer's improbable rise to the upper echelons of literary society. It is a superb caricature of a ruthlessly ambitious young man who will stop at nothing, even murder, to claw his way to the top . . . . Marvelously twisted." - Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"The Award is a propulsive and gripping novel about the literary world, ambition, deception and murder and the twisted corner where they all intersect. Matthew Pearl grabs you from the first sentence and doesn't let go." - Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night We Lost Him