They could be alive somewhere, the man said. It's possible.

[intertribal]

Cormac McCarthy and The Road have won the Pulitzer prize for best fiction - "distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life."

A sample of American life in the book:

On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn.  Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side.  Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind.  A burned house in a clearing and beyond that a reach of meadowlands stark and gray and a raw red mudbank where a roadworks lay abandoned.  Farther along were billboards advertising motels.  Everythign as it once had been save faded and weathered.  At the top of the hill they stood in the cold and the wind, getting their breath.  He looked at the boy.  I'm all right, the boy said.  The man put his hand on his shoulder and nodded toward the open country below them.  He got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the road and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal drawing stretched across the waste.  Nothing to see.  No smoke.  Can I see? the boy said.  Yes.  Of course you can.  The boy leaned on the cart and adjusted the wheel.  What do you see? the man said.  Nothing.  He lowered the glasses.  It's raining.  Yes, the man said.  I know.  (7)

Complete list of winners.