What is the name of the 2014 Pulitzer-winning novel by Donna Tartt?

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The name of Donna Tartt's 2014 Pulitzer-winning novel is The Goldfinch.

Published in 2013, The Goldfinch follows Theodore “Theo” Decker, who survives a terrorist bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the aftermath, he takes a small painting, The Goldfinch, and the artwork becomes a hidden force in his life.

The painting in the novel is based on Carel Fabritius's 1654 work The Goldfinch. Fabritius was a Dutch painter and a pupil of Rembrandt. The real painting shows a chained goldfinch perched against a pale background and is held by the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague.

Tartt's novel explores grief, friendship, obsession, art, crime, and the desire to preserve beauty. The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. It was Tartt's third novel, following The Secret History and The Little Friend, and it became a major international bestseller.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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