Friday, April 18, 2014

EL Doctorow wins Library of Congress prize for American fiction

Fifty-year career wins over jury for 'chanelling the US's myriad voices' in novels such as Ragtime and Billy Bathgate

E L Doctorow
'Our Dickens' … EL Doctorow in his office at New York University in 2004. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

America's "very own Charles Dickens", EL Doctorow, is set to be honoured with the Library of Congress prize for American fiction this summer.

Doctorow, whose career spans 50 years and whose acclaimed novels include Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and World's Fair, said that winning the award would help to – momentarily – soothe his "self-doubt".

"I was a child who read everything I could get my hands on. Eventually, I asked of a story not only what was to happen next, but how is this done? How am I made to live from words on a page? And so I became a writer myself," said the author. "But is there a novelist who doesn't live with self-doubt? The high honour of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction confers a blessed moment of peace and resolution."
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