Jayne Anne Phillips 
Night Watch 
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2024

THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE WINNER IN FICTION’Breathtaking in both its scope and intensity’ TAYARI JONES’Shatteringly particular and audaciously universal’ ALICE RANDALL A mesmerising story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War. In 1874, in the wake of the war, trauma haunts civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old Cona Lee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegh eny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war vet eran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbour, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. The twin horrors of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their history: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of Cona Lee’s father, who left for the war and never returned. Meanwhile in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. Cona Lee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility – the mystery behind the man they call the Night Watch; the child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution. Epic, enthralling and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds and a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.