Colson Whitehead's 'Crook Manifesto' won $50,000 Gotham Prize for Finest Novel about NYC

Colson Whitehead's 'Crook Manifesto' wins $50,000 Gotham Prize for Best Novel about NYC, celebrating the city's complexity and culture.

on Jun 06, 2024

Colson Whitehead's 'Crook Manifesto' won $50,000 Gotham Prize for Finest Novel about NYC | Frontlist

Previous recipients of the $50,000 award include Andrea Elliott and James McBride.

Colson Whitehead's latest literary honor feels like home.

The author's "Crook Manifesto," a crime novel set in 1970s Harlem and centered on a troubled furniture store owner, has won this year's Gotham Book Prize for an outstanding work about New York City. Bradley Tusk, a bookstore entrepreneur and philanthropist, and Howard Wolfson, a political strategist, launched the $50,000 award four years ago.

"The Crook Manifesto is a portrait of a man and his city," said Whitehead, a native New Yorker, in a statement on Wednesday. "Capturing the dynamism of my hometown and its crazy citizens is at the heart of the project, so I can't express how lovely it is for the book to be recognized by the Gotham Book Prize."

In a joint statement, Tusk and Wolfson commended Whitehead's novel as the type of book they had wished to commemorate, one that portrays "the city in all of its complexity."

Previous winners of the Gotham Prize include Andrea Elliott's nonfiction work "Invisible Child" and James McBride's novel "Deacon King Kong."

Whitehead is one of the country's most recognized novelists, having won the Pulitzer Prize twice. His works include "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys." "Crook Manifesto" is the second novel of a projected Harlem trilogy, which began in 2021 with "Harlem Shuffle."