Independence Day is a 1995 novel by Richard Ford and the sequel to Ford's 1986 novel The Sportswriter.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1996, the first novel ever to win both awards in a single year.
Independence Day follows Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey real estate agent, through the titular holiday weekend as he visits his ex-wife, his troubled son, his current lover, the tenants of one of his properties, and some clients of his who have been having trouble finding the perfect house. It focuses in particular on a car trip with his son to the Basketball and Baseball halls of fame. It was incredibly well-reviewed, with Michiko Kakutani writing in The New York Times that "Mr. Ford has galvanized his reputation as one of his generation's most eloquent voices." Similar in theme to John Updike's Rabbit novels, Independence Day is a pastoral meditation on a man reaching middle age and assessing his place in life and the greater world.
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Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1976–2000)
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- Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
- Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
- The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
- The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
- Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
- Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
- Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
- A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
- Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
- Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
- A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
- The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
- Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
- Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
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- Complete list
- (1918–1925)
- (1926–1950)
- (1951–1975)
- (1976–2000)
- (2001–2025)
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