Which author won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Bell for Adano?

John Hersey won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for A Bell for Adano.

Hersey published the novel in 1944, drawing on his experience as a journalist covering World War II. The story takes place in the fictional Italian town of Adano after the Allied invasion. Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian American officer in the U.S. Army, serves as the town's acting mayor and tries to restore practical civic life.

A central plot element is the search for a replacement for Adano's historic bell, which German soldiers have taken for scrap metal. The bell symbolizes community identity and the recovery of ordinary life after occupation.

The novel won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and became a widely read wartime work. Hersey is also known for Hiroshima, his influential 1946 account of six survivors of the atomic bombing. Readers sometimes confuse the two books because both are associated with World War II, but A Bell for Adano is a novel set in occupied Italy.