At the November 15th National Book Awards, Jesmyn Ward was awarded her second prize in the Fiction category for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. Russian journalist Masha Gessen took home the Nonfiction trophy for The Future Is History. Get the full details here.
Birthdays
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.