The Award: A Novel

"Grips the reader and never lets go"—Boston Globe

“The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition but 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

From the author of The Dante Club comes the word-of-mouth sensation, a thrilling, twisty story about a young writer trying to make his way through a cutthroat literary scene with life-and-death stakes.

David Trent is an aspiring novelist hoping to make a name for himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place where ambitious writers lurk around every corner.

He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale, who, behind his celebrated image, is . . . haughty and disdainful, definitely not of the mentor variety. Until David wins a prestigious award for his new book.

Silas is at last interested . . . and jealous. But soon the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, which forces the writer into a set of desperate choices. Then fate intervenes—and nothing can ever go back to normal.

With the wit and psychological wisdom of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s bestselling The Plot and Teddy Wayne’s The Winner, The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about secrets, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.