Which novel by Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004?

The novel by Edward P. Jones that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004 was The Known World.

Published in 2003, the historical novel is set in antebellum Virginia, in the fictional Manchester County. Its central figure, Henry Townsend, is a formerly enslaved Black man who becomes a slaveholder himself. Through his plantation and the surrounding community, Jones examines how slavery distorted relationships, law, family, and ideas of freedom.

The Known World also won the National Book Critics Circle Award and later received the 2005 International Dublin Literary Award. The title is sometimes mixed up with The World According to Garp, John Irving’s 1978 novel, or The Lost World, Michael Crichton’s 1995 sequel to Jurassic Park; neither won the 2004 fiction Pulitzer.