Whitehead’s novel, published last July by Doubleday, follows Ray Carney, the furniture store owner and ex-fence introduced in Harlem Shuffle, as he navigates the 1970s in New York. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “It’s not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history.”
“Crook Manifesto is a portrait of a man, but also his city,” Whitehead said in a statement. “Capturing the dynamism of my hometown and its crazy citizens is at the heart of the project, so I can’t express how lovely it is for the book to be recognized by the Gotham Book Prize.”
The novel beat out 10 other books, both fiction and nonfiction, including Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting, Aisha Abdel Gawad’s Between Two Moons, Patrick Brinkley’s All the Beauty in the World, and Maria Smilios’ The Black Angels.
The Gotham Book Prize was founded by Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson in 2020. Previous winners include James McBride’s Deacon King Kong and Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
