WESTPORT — “In the Distance,” a novel chronicling an immigrant’s experiences during America’s westward expansion in the mid-19th Century, has been selected for the theme of the Westport Library’s “WestportREADS 2025” program.

The first novel by Hernan Diaz, “In the Distance” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction in 2018. It was described as “a gorgeously written novel that charts one man’s growth from boyhood to mythic status as he journeys between continents and the extremes of the human condition,” by the awards committee that reviewed nominated works. 

Diaz subsequently won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel, “Trust.”

Diaz will appear at the Feb. 13 keynote program of WestportREADS 2025, an annual community reading program that this year will encompass a series of lectures, movies, discussion groups, crafts-making and even a pub gathering during January and February. For a complete list of the planned activities, click here.

“The experience of foreignness has determined my entire life,” Diaz said about the novel in an interview with the Paris Review. “I wanted to recreate that feeling. In doing so, I tried to transcend the obvious fact that the protagonist is a foreigner.”

Limited copies of “In the Distance” are available for borrowing now from the library, with a larger allotment expected Dec. 13. It is also available in digital format.

“In the Distance” tells the story of a young Swedish immigrant who “travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend,” according to the library’s WestportREADS announcement.

The book also was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade. For questions, call the Westport Library at 203-291-4800.