Fiction Pulitzer returns and Adam Johnson wins it

NEW YORK (AP) ― Adam Johnson’s “The Orphan Master’s Son,’’ a labyrinthine story of a man’s travails in North Korea, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, restoring a high literary honor a year after no fiction award was given.

Pulitzer judges on Monday praised Johnson’s book as “an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.’’ It was the third book by the 45-year-old Johnson, who teaches creative writing at Stanford University.

“I wanted to give a picture of what it was like to be an ordinary person in North Korea,’’ said Johnson, who spent a few days there to research his novel. “It’s illegal there for citizens to interact with foreigners, so the only way I could really get to know these people was through my imagination.’’

Johnson’s novel was one of three works with Asian themes to win Pulitzers. Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced,’’ the story of a successful Pakistani-American lawyer whose dinner party goes out of control, won for drama and Fredrik Logevall’s “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam,’’ for history.

The biography winner was Tom Reiss’ “The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.’’ Gilbert King’s “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America’’ won for general nonfiction and Sharon Olds’ “Stag’s Leap’’ for poetry.

Four of the five books to win Pulitzers were published by divisions of Random House, Inc., which also released two of the most acclaimed books of 2012 not to receive awards Monday: Robert Caro’s latest Lyndon Johnson biography, “The Passage of Power’’; and Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,’’ a finalist in the general nonfiction category and winner of the National Book Award.