The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.
Mark your calendars, LitStackers! The Award by Matthew Pearl is in presale (the best time to buy a book), and ready to hit the bookshelf on Dec 2, 2025. Our anticipation is palpable. Published by HarperCollins, this novel is already making waves with early readers. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the cover from the publisher’s official description to early reviews that will help you pre-order your copy ASAP. Let’s dive in!
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In This Spotlight On The Award
About The Award
David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner.
He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale who, beneath his celebrated image, is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him.
Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book.
Suddenly Silas is interested—if intensely spiteful.
But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with an alarming update, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices.
Then, fate intervenes—with shocking consequences . . .
The Award is a timely, razor-sharp, and unputdownable novel about writing groups, publishing, ambition, human foibles, and the dangerous things we will do to get ahead.
Praise for The Award
“A darkly entertaining satire set in present-day Cambridge, Mass., The Award by Matthew Pearl tells the story of an unscrupulous writer’s improbable rise to the upper echelons of literary society. It is a superb caricature of a ruthlessly ambitious young man who will stop at nothing, even murder, to claw his way to the top . . . . Marvelously twisted.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“The Award is a propulsive and gripping novel about the literary world, ambition, deception and murder and the twisted corner where they all intersect. Matthew Pearl grabs you from the first sentence and doesn’t let go.”—Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night We Lost Him
“The Award begins as a wryly funny satire of thwarted literary ambition, but it quickly evolves into something darker and more disturbing. Matthew Pearl’s addictive and propulsive novel has the twisted nightmare logic of a Patricia Highsmith thriller.”—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Tracy Flick Can’t Win and Mrs. Fletcher
About Matthew Pearl, Author of The Award
Matthew Pearl’s books have been international and New York Times bestsellers and have been translated into more than thirty languages. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Slate, and he edits Truly Adventurous magazine. He has been chosen as Best Author in Boston magazine’s “Best of Boston” issue and received the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. He lived in the Boston area for many years and now lives in Florida.
Matthew Pearl is the author of The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, The Technologists, The Last Bookaneer, and The Dante Chamber, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales.
You can connect with Matthew Pearl on their website, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN Hardcover 9780063445277
Pub Date: Dec 2, 2025
Titles by Matthew Pearl
Other LitStack Resources
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