Rabbit at Rest is John Updike’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.
The book is the fourth and final completed novel in Updike’s Rabbit series. It finds Harry, now older and retired, dividing his time between Pennsylvania and Florida while confronting physical decline, family tensions, and the consequences of choices made across earlier decades.
Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice: first for Rabbit Is Rich in 1982 and again for Rabbit at Rest in 1991. Because both novels include “Rabbit” in their titles, readers sometimes mix up which book received which award. Rabbit at Rest is the series’ concluding volume, although Updike later published Rabbit Remembered, a 2001 novella-length work.
The novel’s title signals both Harry’s desire for retirement and the deeper finality of his story. Its themes include aging, marriage, American prosperity, illness, and the passage of time.