Which author won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Dragon's Teeth?

Upton Sinclair won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Dragon’s Teeth.

Published in 1942, Dragon’s Teeth is the third novel in Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series. Its story takes Lanny Budd through Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Sinclair used the novel to dramatize political extremism, antisemitism, and the erosion of democratic institutions in the 1930s.

The title refers to the mythological dragon’s teeth that, when planted, produce armed warriors. That image suits a novel about political violence and the rapid growth of authoritarian power. Although Sinclair is often most closely associated with The Jungle, his Pulitzer-winning book belongs to a much later political sequence.

Readers sometimes confuse the award with Sinclair’s earlier muckraking fiction. The Jungle exposed conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry, but it did not win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Dragon’s Teeth was the work that received the 1943 honor.