Julie Otsuka's "The Buddha in the Attic" wins PEN/Faulkner award

"The Buddha in the Attic"

/ Knopf

(CBS/AP) - Julie Otsuka's "The Buddha in the Attic," a brief, poetic novel about young Japanese women who emigrate to the U.S. and marry men they have never met, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Monday that Otsuka will receive $15,000 for the prize, which has been given in previous years to Philip Roth and John Updike among others. Her novel was a finalist last fall for the National Book Award.

The Faulkner finalists included Russell Banks' novel, "Lost Memory of Skin," Anita Desai's "The Artist of Disappearance," along with two short stories collections: Don DeLillo's "The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories" and Steven Millhauser for "We Others: New and Selected Stories."

Otsuka's first novel, 2002's "When the Emperor Was Divine," centered around the internment of a Japanese-American family during World War II.

The PEN/Faulkner Award, which was first given in 1981, is described as America's largest peer juried prize for fiction.