Jennifer Egan's Novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on 18 April 2011. The novel by Jennifer Egan was honoured for its big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed. Egan’s novel surprised and pleased critics with its experimental format, searching and unconventional narratives about modern angst and identity. A considerable section in the book was structured like a power point presentation. She had also won the National Book Critics Circle prize in early 2011. Her other novels include The Invisible Circus, Look at Me and The Keep.

The play Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, which examines race relations and the effects of modern gentrification, won the Pulitzer drama prize. Clybourne Park imagines what might have happened to the family that moved out of the house in the fictitious Chicago neighborhood of Clybourne Park, which is where Lorraine Hansberry's Younger clan is headed by the end of her 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun. Raisin.

The Pulitzer for history was awarded to The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, by Eric Foner. The Fiery Trial was cited as a well orchestrated examination of Lincoln's changing views of slavery, bringing unforeseeable twists and a fresh sense of improbability to a familiar story.

The biography award went to Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow which was described as a sweeping, authoritative portrait of Gen. George Washington.

Kay Ryan's The Best of It: New and Selected Poems won the poetry prize. Kay’s work was described as a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind.

The general nonfiction prize was given to The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, while the music prize went to Zhou Long for Madame White Snake.