Posted on February 5, 2021 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

The 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence were awarded yesterday!

Deacon King Kong, by James McBride, won the medal for fiction, while Fathoms: The World in the Whale, by Rebecca Giggs, won the nonfiction honor.

Deacon King Kong, set in 1969 Brooklyn, begins with a church deacon shooting a housing project’s well-known drug dealer, and it explores how this act affects not just the shooter and victim, but also the housing project’s residents, the cops who investigate, the church where the shooter served, and the various white neighbors, both law-abiding and otherwise.

The novel is McBride’s first book since the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Fathoms explores not just the history of whales but also how their condition is a reflection of human behavior and a bellwether for the condition of the environment.

The New York Times Book Review called it a "delving, haunted, and poetic debut," and it also was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

The prize honors the best in its category published in the prior year.

Categories: Today in Books

Tagged As: Awards

Comments
There are no comments yet.
Add Comment

* Indicates a required field