WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. novelist Philip Roth became the first writer to earn three PEN/Faulkner award for fiction Monday when his novel "Everyman" won the 2007 award.
Roth's novel tells the story of the physical decline and death of its unnamed protagonist.
"What hit me so hard about 'Everyman' was its intensity and its systematic, pitiless stripping away of false comforts -- and then real comforts," David Gates, one of the three writers who judged the entries, told The Washington Post. "The only comfort for the reader is that Roth ... made even this devastating material into a thing of beauty."
Roth, 73, said he was delighted to win his third PEN/Faulkner award because, year over year, "there just seems to be a consistency to the quality of the winners."
Roth will receive $15,000. He and the other finalists will be honored in May.
Roth's other two PEN/Faulkner award-winning novels were "Operation Shylock," written in 1994 and "The Human Stain," written in 2001.
Based in Washington, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.
