Trust: Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Trust is a novel structured as a literary puzzle about money, power, and intimacy. It examines the myths surrounding wealth and the narratives that often function as history. The story centers on Benjamin and Helen Rask, a prominent couple in 1920s New York. He is a Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of aristocrats. Together they have accumulated immense wealth during a decade of excess and speculation. The novel takes as its starting point Bonds, a successful 1938 novel that explores their rise and the question of how they acquired their fortune. However, Diaz's Trust presents multiple versions of this story, placing different accounts in conversation and tension with one another. A woman in the narrative works to separate fact from fiction across these competing versions. Through layered perspectives and revelations, the novel explores how capital shapes reality and how power can distort facts.