Author Adam Johnson is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel "The Orphan Master's Son".

The winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction announced Monday is author Adam Johnson for his novel "The Orphan Master's Son," which is set in North Korea. The committee that decided the winner described the novel as "an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart."

This is Johnson's third book. He is also a teacher at Stanford. The announcement by the Pulitzer Committee came as a relief to literature watchers who were disappointed when the award was not given out in 2012. It was only the 11th time in the history of the Pulitzer Prize that the committee declined to award a fiction prize, and the first time that had happened since 1977.

In its nearly 100-year history, the Pulitzer Prize in fiction has been awarded to some of America's longest-lasting fiction novels: Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind," John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved."

Other 2013 Pulitzer arts winners include:

• Drama: Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
• History: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
• Biography: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
• Poetry: Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds
• General nonfiction: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
• Music: Caroline Shaw for Partita for 8 Voices