Apprised of a prize

My post below about the relative parsimony of American prose book prizes is as least partly in error, for omitting the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, established last year. The first winner of this $100,000 prize, announced yesterday, is British writer Tamar Yellin, for the novel "The Genizah at the House of Shepher." The prize is funded by the Rohr family foundation and adminisetered by the Jewish Book Council. Sami Rohr, of Miami, made his fortune in real estate development. Find out more about the prize here.

I say "partly" in error because this is a specialized prize, as distinct from the Pulitzer, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner, or National Book Critics Circle Awards. There are others, such as the new Pritzker Military Library award for lifetime achievement in writing about American military history, also $100,000, to be announced in October. The winner doesn't have to be an American, and the original work doesn't have to be written in English.

A nonspecialized book competition for works of prose, in English by American writers, with a prize of that size, even half that size, remains to be established. The country is thick with billionaires who could easily endow it, and perhaps it will happen.