The year with no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner, despite finalists including Train Dreams and Swamplandia!, was 2012. The other finalist was David Foster Wallace’s posthumously published novel The Pale King.
The Pulitzer fiction jury sent three books to the Pulitzer board, but no title received the majority required for the award. As a result, the board announced that no prize would be given. This was not a cancellation of the category; it was a deliberate decision not to select a winner from that year’s finalists.
The decision attracted considerable attention because the finalists were widely respected. The 2012 episode was the first time since 1977 that no fiction prize was awarded, and it was the eleventh such gap in the category’s history. The following year, Adam Johnson won for The Orphan Master’s Son.