Crook Manifesto Wins 2024 Gotham Book Prize Award

The 2024 winner of the 2024 Gotham Book Prize is Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead.

He will be rewarded $50,000 for the best book set or about New York City. Previous winners of the award include include Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott, Deacon King Kong by James McBride, The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet, and Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana.

The Gotham Prize Award was created in 2020 by Bradley Tusk, owner of the independent bookstore P&T Knitwear as well as Howard Wolfson. They wanted to celebrate books about or set in New York City as well as to uplift writers during the pandemic.

“Crook Manifesto is a portrait of a man, but also his city. 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,” said Colson Whitehead.

“New Yorkers are lucky that a writer as talented as Colson Whitehead has turned his sights again to New York City,” said Tusk and Howard Wolfson. “Crook Manifesto’s New York of the 1970s is the tale of one city dying and a new one being born from its ashes. We started the Gotham Book Prize precisely to recognize works like this that capture the city in all of its energetic complexity.”

“We are thrilled to be awarding this year’s Gotham Book Prize at our gala. Colson Whitehead is one of New York City’s greatest treasures and champions and has harnessed his tremendous gifts and first-hand experiences to take us back to a pivotal moment in Harlem’s history through Crook Manifesto,” said Dennis M. Walcott, Queens Public Library President and CEO and member of the Gotham Book Prize jury. “My congratulations to him and all the finalists, who have moved and inspired us with their outstanding stories starring New York City. It is an honor to be able to provide our communities with free access to their unique voices.”

Crook Manifesto is the second book in the Ray Carney series and follows Ray’s experiences growing up in harlem and New York City in the 1950s to the 1980s. He often gets caught up in the crooked world as much as he tries to avoid it and live a good life. Just like Ray, Whitehead was also born and raised in Manhattan.

Whitehead has won the Pulitzer Prize for two of his novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, two amazing novels I recommend everyone to read. Now, Whitehead is focusing on finishing the third and final book in the Ray Carney series as we follow Ray’s latest adventures during the 1980s.

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