Percival Everett’s ‘James’ wins $50,000 Kirkus Prize for fiction

AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Percival Everett’s novel “James” has won a $50,000 prize that continues Everett’s recent wave of literary honors. “James” was awarded the Kirkus Prize for fiction on Wednesday. Everett’s novel is a reworking of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” that imagines Mark Twain’s classic from the perspective of the escaped enslaved man whom Huckleberry Finn befriends. It is also a finalist for the National Book Award and the Booker Prize. Winning the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction was Adam Higginbotham’s “Challenger,” about the 1986 space shuttle tragedy. And winning for young readers’ literature was Kenneth M. Cadow’s ”Gather,” a coming-of-age novel set in rural Vermont.