“The Orphan Master’s Son” (Random House)  Mr. Johnson, 45, was cited by the board for an “exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”  While writing the novel, Mr. Johnson said, he read propaganda and books approved by the regime. He eventually included Kim Jong-il, the late North Korean leader, as a character in the book. “I came to, not feel for him, but to see a human dimension in him,” he said. “He was a very cunning person, a very witty person. He had flaws like all people. The more I studied him the more I realized that he was a very human figure.”  Finalists Nathan Englander, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank”; Eowyn Ivey, “The Snow Child.”  Mr. Akhtar, 42, a Pakistani-American, grew up admiring the films of Woody Allen and longed to set a play “in that milieu of the moneyed intelligentsia of New York — but with a character who shared my ethnicity.” In “Disgraced,” that character is Amir, a successful corporate lawyer whose deep-seated self-loathing is fully revealed at a dinner party that is classic Manhattan, with talk of art and money giving way to suspicion and hatred.  Mr. Akhtar is also a novelist and actor, and is now at work on his second novel while preparing his next play, “The Who & The What,” for its world premiere in California next winter. If “Disgraced” was a metaphorical riff on “Othello,” the next play is a similar meditation on “The Taming of the Shrew,” he said on Monday. “Both plays are about Muslim Americans,” he said, “but the new one is a comedy.”  Finalists Gina Gionfriddo, “Rapture, Blister, Burn”; Amy Herzog, “4000 Miles.”  “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam” (Random House)  How did the United States get drawn into war in Vietnam, ignoring France’s bitter post-World War II experience there? In a follow-up to a book focused on America’s role in Vietnam in the 1960s, “Choosing War,” Mr. Logevall, a professor of history at Cornell, has provided what his Pulitzer citation called “a balanced, deeply researched history” of that long, unintended slide into a conflict that proved unwinnable.  “In teaching the war to undergraduates, I became more and more interested in the French Indochina war,” Mr. Logevall said when asked what inspired him to write an 800-page prequel. “I had the sense that the French experience was the key to everything that happened later.”  Finalists Bernard Bailyn, “The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675; John Fabian Witt, “Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History.”  “The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo” (Crown)  Alexandre Dumas’s famous novel was inspired by the life of his father, Thomas-Alexandre, who was born to a slave woman in Haiti but rose to a general’s rank in the French Army until he incurred the enmity of Napoleon.  “For me the great thrill of this book is that I pulled somebody out of the pages of fiction, who was forgotten about in fact, and showed his exploits to be a true story,” said Mr. Reiss, who learned of his prize while sitting in a dentist’s chair. “It’s swashbuckling, but for a purpose. He was the highest-ranking black leader in a white society until modern times and really a very serious revolutionary.”  Finalists Michael Gorra, “Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece”; David Nasaw, “The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.”  “Stag’s Leap” (Alfred A. Knopf)  The poems in “Stag’s Leap” were written after the breakup of Ms. Olds’s 30-year marriage in 1997. Ms. Olds, 70, promised her children, fully grown at the time, that she wouldn’t publish the poems in a book for several years. “I didn’t want them to have to be concentrating on Mom’s writing while they were adjusting to the new family pattern of life,” Ms. Olds said on Monday from her home in New Hampshire.  Finalists Jack Gilbert, “Collected Poems”; Bruce Weigl, “The Abundance of Nothing.”  “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” (Harper)  Mr. King, 51, said he had become fascinated by what he called “lost cases in civil rights history,” cases that were on the front pages of newspapers at the time but had been mostly forgotten since then. “They got glossed over,” he said. “I started looking into them and found these untold stories. Thurgood Marshall was this amazing trial lawyer and his life was threatened constantly. He wasn’t just about reconstructing the American dream. He was out there fighting for people’s lives.”  Finalists Katherine Boo, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity”; David George Haskell, “The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature.”  “Partita for 8 Voices” (New Amsterdam Records)  The Pulitzer Committee called “Partita” a “highly polished and inventive work” that incorporates “speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.”  “It’s about things falling apart and coming together again,” said Ms. Shaw, 30, who wrote the piece for the vocal group she sings in, Roomful of Teeth. “I wanted to make sounds that I never heard before.”  Finalists Aaron Jay Kernis, “Pieces of Winter Sky”; Wadada Leo Smith, “Ten Freedom Summers.”
âThe Orphan Masterâs Sonâ by Adam Johnson won the fiction prize and âDisgracedâ by Ayad Akhtar won for drama.