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New York (dpa) - Novelist E.L. Doctorow won the 15,000-dollar PEN/Faulkner award for fiction Tuesday for his novel The March, set during the American Civil War in the mid-1860s.
George Garret, the novelist and poet who was one of three judges on the prize committee, said the book was the best yet by the acclaimed author of such novels as Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, for which he won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1980.
Doctorow told the Washington Post that he was "very gratified" by the award and praised the PEN/Faulkner organization for what he called its "real passion" for literature.
Four runners-up will each receive 5,000 dollars: Karen Fisher for A Sudden Country; William Henry Lewis for I Got Somebody in Staunton; James Salter for Last Night; and Bruce Wagner for The Chrysanthemum Palace.
The annual prize has been awarded since 1981. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, based in Washington, is "committed to building audiences for exceptional literature and bringing writers together with their readers"
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
