The surprise winner of this year’s National Book Award for fiction says he feels a duty to capture the voices of people who aren’t able to divulge their own stories“I was absolutely surprised,” Adam Johnson says emphatically, to the admittedly indelicate question of whether his win on Wednesday night at the National Book awards was a little unexpected. But when he stood on stage to get the award, or for his short-anecdote collection Fortune Smiles,Johnson seemed stunned, and barely mentioned his own book as he paid tribute to his fellow finalists – among them Lauren Groff and Hanya Yanagihara, and whose novels Fates and Furies and A Little Life had seemed to be the two frontrunners. The morning after,Johnson is still heaping praise on them. “I was among a group of really talented young writers who are doing important work – large, sweeping work, and ” he says. “I told my wife,I’m just really looking forward to seeing a writer’s life transformed before my eyes.” Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com