April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Cormac McCarthy's ``The Road,'' set in a post-apocalyptic U.S., won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction today, while David Lindsay-Abaire's ``Rabbit Hole'' was a surprise winner for drama.

McCarthy's novel follows a father and son as they wander through a destroyed U.S. where the only fresh food is human flesh. ``The Road,'' published by Alfred A. Knopf, was recently selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

McCarthy, 73, has written 10 novels, including the acclaimed ``The Border Trilogy'' consisting of ``All the Pretty Horses,'' ``The Crossing'' and ``Cities of the Plain.''

In his Bloomberg News review of ``The Road,'' Craig Seligman wrote: ``Behind the starkness and simplicity lies McCarthy's cunning as a novelist: He knows how to tell a taut story. `The Road' moves along, suspenseful and occasionally terrifying. You turn the pages eagerly, wanting to know what happens next.''

``Rabbit Hole,'' about a family weathering the accidental death of a child, won the Pulitzer after the three finalists in the drama category failed to gain majority support from the 17- member Pulitzer board. Those finalists were Rinde Eckert's ``Orpheus X,'' Eisa Davis's ``Bulrusher'' and Quiara Alegria Hudes's ``Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue.''

``Rabbit Hole,'' starring Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club in February 2006. It was a departure for Lindsay-Abaire, best-known for absurdist comedies such as ``Fuddy Meers'' and ``Kimberly Akimbo.''

``Spring Awakening'' was considered the favorite after getting the best reviews of the season.

``I'm stunned,'' Lindsay-Abaire, 37, said in a telephone interview from his home in Brooklyn. ``So much time has passed. I thought, `They're never going to remember me.'''

`The Looming Tower'

New York Times critic Ben Brantley, chairman of the drama jury, wrote in his review that ``this anatomy of grief doesn't so much jerk tears as tap them, from a reservoir of feelings common to anyone who has experienced the landscape-shifting vacuum left by a death in the family.''

Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, won the general nonfiction prize for ``The Looming Tower: Al- Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.'' In her Bloomberg review, Celestine Bohlen said it ``penetrates the Islamist terrorist network, offering startling insights, odd details and finally, at long last, full portraits of the men behind the attacks.''

The Pulitzer for biography went to Debby Applegate for ``The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher.'' Beecher was an abolitionist minister -- and brother of ``Uncle Tom's Cabin'' author Harriet Beecher Stowe -- who was also involved in a famous adultery trial in 1875. Applegate, a graduate of Amherst College and Yale, spent 20 years researching and writing the book.

Bradbury, Coltrane

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff won the history prize for ``The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.'' The veteran journalists chronicled how reporters came to recognize the significance of the civil-rights struggle ands give it full coverage.

The poetry prize was awarded to Natasha Trethewey for ``Native Guard.'' The daughter of a black mother and white father, her poems invoke her late mother and the history of her native Mississippi. Trethewey, who was born in 1966, is a professor of creative writing at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia.

Ornette Coleman, 77, won the music Pulitzer for ``Sound Grammar,'' a live recording of eight original songs performed in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 2005. Coleman, a saxophonist who pioneered the free-style movement of jazz four decades ago, received a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in February.

The Pulitzer board awarded special citations to science- fiction writer Ray Bradbury, 86, and the late jazz legend John Coltrane.

Bradbury, who wrote classics such as ``Fahrenheit 451'' and ``The Martian Chronicles,'' has published more than 30 books and about 600 short stories, along with film scripts, poems and other works, according to his Web site.

Coltrane, regarded by many jazz critics as the most influential tenor saxophone player, died at age 40 of liver cancer in 1967.

To contact the writer on this story: Jeffrey Burke in New York at mromano6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 16, 2007 18:02 EDT