Novelist Everett, playwright Jacobs-Jenkins among Pulitzer winners in the arts

Everett’s Pulitzer cemented 'James' as 2024’s top-selling and most celebrated US literary novel, accelerating the 68-year-old’s remarkable rise after decades of obscurity. Photo: AP

Percival Everett's novel James, his radical reimagining of The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved title character, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ drawing-room drama about an accomplished Black family destroying itself from within, won for drama. It also earned six Tony Award nominations last week.