The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel,[9][10] and remains widely acclaimed as Wilder's most famous novel.[11] In 1998, the book was rated number 37 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library on the list of the 100 best 20th-century novels.[12] Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[13]
Influences
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey is mentioned in the tenth episode of Monk (TV series) - Mr Monk and the earthquake.
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey is mentioned in Elizabeth Goudge's war-time novel The Castle on the Hill (1942, Chapter I, Part II), where a major character explains that, "... in this case death came to those five just at the most fitting moment of their lives, and that this so-called tragedy, as it affected the lives of others, brought alterations in the pattern [of life] that spelled in the long run only blessing and peace": this character, an elderly historian, is attempting to offer consolation to a woman he has just met whose life has been full of personal tragedy and war-time disaster).
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey was cited by American writer John Hersey as a direct inspiration for his nonfiction work Hiroshima (1946).
- Qui non riposano, a 1945 novel by Indro Montanelli, takes inspiration from the novel.
- David Mitchell's novels Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas echo the story in many ways, most explicitly through the character Luisa Rey.
- Ayn Rand references the theme in Atlas Shrugged, her epic of a fictional USA's decline into an impoverished kleptocracy. In the aftermath of a disastrous collision in a railroad tunnel, she highlights train passengers who, in one way or another, promoted the moral climate that made the accident likely.
- The book is mentioned in passing by a character in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.
- The book is referred to in the novel Numero Zero (2015), by Umberto Eco.
- The story is quoted on the cover of Sea Power's 2003 album The Decline of British Sea Power.
- The novel is mentioned in passing by a character in Joe Hill's 2016 novel The Fireman.
- The Australian television series Glitch references the novel and quotes the passage "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."[14]
Inspirational
- The book was quoted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the memorial service for victims of the September 11 attacks in 2001.[15]
- The book was cited during the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse by Brian Williams of NBC News as well as Charlie Gibson of ABC News.
