I was lucky enough to keep on meeting them, people who believed that reading and writing were the best things a person could do with her life. I was lucky enough as a child to have had a mother and teachers who taught me that whatever happened in life, however bad things might get, I could always escape by reading a book.

(In my opinion, Nicholas Ortega’s gorgeous cover design with its regal Harlequin Great Dane and beach-ball-bright colors deserves partial credit for the novel’s commercial success.) Her modest acceptance speech at the awards ceremony displayed the same qualities-honesty, humor, warmth-that give the novel its appeal: Nunez is no stranger to prestigious prizes (she is the winner of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship) or to critical acclaim (each of her seven previous books was widely lauded), but the combination of this award and the universally rapturous reviews of the novel finally found her, at the age of sixty-seven, the wide readership she deserves. In 2018, Sigrid Nunez won the National Book Award for The Friend, her rousing novel about a woman who, after the suicide of her friend, finds herself saddled with grief and a two-hundred-pound Great Dane. What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead, 2020) The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead, 2018) Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead, 2014) Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead, 2010) The Last of Her Kindby Sigrid Nunez (Picador, 2007) Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury by Sigrid Nunez (Harper, 1998)įor Rouennaby Sigrid Nunez (Picador, 2001) A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez (Picador, 1995)