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Vancouver author John Vaillant’s book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast is named this week as one of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Books. The Pulitzer Prize board announces the finalists at the same time as the winner, who is Nathan Thrall for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
Joining Vaillant as a finalist is Siddharth Kara, author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
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In Fire Weather, Vaillant, author of the best-selling The Tiger and The Golden Spruce, offers a fascinating account of the colossal Fort McMurray wildfire of 2016 while exploring the history of the North American oil industry and the changing relationship between climate, fire and humans.
The Fort McMurray fire burned 5,600 square kilometers of land, destroyed 2,400 homes and buildings and caused the evacuation of 90,000 people. The final cost figure is about $9 billion.
“With masterful prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a fascinating journey through the intertwined stories of the North American oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires.” and lives changed forever by these disasters. . “The Urgent Work of John Vaillant is a book for and from our fiery new century, which has only just begun,” read a statement on the Pulitzer Prize website.
The Pulitzer Prizes recognize achievements in newspapers, magazines, online journalism, literature and musical composition.
This honor adds to a long list of literary accolades bestowed upon Fire Weather, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award (United States), as well as a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Prize. Trust Prize for Non-Fiction and Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
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Fire Weather was also one of The New York Times’ Top 10 Books for 2023. It was also named a best book of the year by The Guardian, Time magazine, The Globe and Mail, The New Yorker, Financial Times, and CBC.
Last month it was announced that Vendôme Pictures, the Oscar-winning company behind CODA, had acquired the film and television rights to Fire Weather.
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