Visiting an Elusive Writer, and Revisiting His Masterpiece

“May I ask what this is about?”

Edward P. Jones and I were in an elevator in the Army and Navy Building in Washington, D.C., not far from the White House, on our way up to The New York Times bureau. Jones’s most recent book was published in 2006. Why did I want to interview him now?

Thus it fell to me to inform him that, in a recent poll commissioned by the Times Book Review, his only novel, “The Known World,” had been voted the best work of fiction by an American writer in the 21st century so far. (The book placed fourth overall). Breaking that news was not a bad way to break the ice.

He seemed pleased—“Number four,” he whispered to himself, smiling — and maybe also a little bit surprised. That was how I felt too.

Can a book, or an author, be lauded and overlooked at the same time? “The Known World” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004. Jones has been a MacArthur fellow, and his two short story collections, “Lost in the City” (1992) and “All Aunt Hagar’s Children,” (2006, and No. 70 on our list) are plumed with awards and nominations of their own.

Dawn Davis, who edited “The Known World” and is currently an executive editor at Simon & Schuster, recalled by email the experience of seeing the novel into print. “I remember telling the copy editor that we were stewards of a masterpiece,” she wrote, “so to take extra care, that the book would be assigned to our children’s children.”

Its canonical status is hardly in doubt, but at the same time, 20 years after its publication, “The Known World” can still feel like a discovery. Even a rereading propels you into uncharted territory. You may think you know about American slavery, about the American novel, about the American slavery novel, but here is something you couldn’t have imagined, a secret history hidden in plain sight.