Acclaimed novelist Alice McDermott has won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award for her 2023 novel, Absolution.
The award, announced Oct. 11, is presented by the Mark Twain House & Museum and carries a $25,000 prize, endowed by bestselling thriller novelist David Baldacci, his wife, Michelle Baldacci, and Bank of America. The novel follows Patricia, the wife of a Navy lawyer, as she navigates a community of expats and locals in Vietnam on the verge of America’s involvement in the war there. In its starred review, Kirkus called it “McDermott’s masterpiece.”
The judges for the Twain prize concurred. A press release anonymously quoted one judge, who stated, “McDermott masterfully evokes time and place, with the kind of detail that seems impossible to invent, and fully grasps the psychology of her working-class, Irish Catholic characters. And she is incapable of writing an untrue sentence.”
The award is the latest in a string of commendations McDermott has received throughout her career. Her 1987 novel, That Night, was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist, and she won an NBA for her 1998 novel, Charming Billy. Her 1992 novel, At Weddings and Wakes and her 2006 novel, After This, were also Pulitzer finalists. Her 2018 novel, The Ninth Hour, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize.
The Twain award was established in 2016 to honor “the searching and challenging spirit of Mark Twain’s way of looking at the world.” Past recipients have included Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Jennifer Haigh’s Mercy Street.
McDermott will formally receive the award at a ceremony Nov. 1 at the Mark Twain & House and Museum in Hartford, Conn.
Mark Athitakis is a freelance writer.
