Demon Copperhead

Demon Copperhead brings the influence of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield into contemporary Appalachia. Barbara Kingsolver follows a boy growing up in poverty, using this setting to examine class divisions, rural childhood and addiction during the opioid crisis. The novel’s connection with Dickens supplies a literary point of comparison, while its social circumstances belong to modern rural America.

Published in 2022, the book jointly won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and also received the Women’s Prize for Fiction that year. Readers can compare the two prize records below; the shared Pulitzer award is a joint win, not a shortlist result.