Peter Matthiessen Wins Second National Book Award

Author and fly fisher Peter Matthiessen received the National Book Award for fiction last night, almost three decades after winning his first for the non-fiction The Snow Leopard (1979). The award was given for Matthiessen’s Shadow Country (Modern Library, April 2008, 912 pages), a reworked trilogy of novels from the 1990s that includes a retelling of Lost Man’s River. “Matthiessen, a world traveler, naturalist and founder of the Paris Review, is one of the great names in modern letters, but few — including Matthissen — expected to see him nominated this year. His novel, neither new nor old, condenses and deepens his previous work about a ruthless landowner from the Florida Everglades.”
Shadow Country (Modern Library) on Amazon.