Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. Completed in approximately 1657–59, the well-preserved painting is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. For many years, the attribution of the painting—which features a young Dutch woman reading a letter before an open window—was lost, with first Rembrandt and then Pieter de Hooch being credited for the work before it was properly identified in 1880. After World War II, the painting was briefly in possession of the Soviet Union. The painting depicts
The Man with the Golden Arm (novel) friend who later revealed that he was an intravenous-drug user. This inspired Algren to incorporate drug use into the novel. Annual National Book Awards were re-established in 1950 by the American book industry, recognizing books in three categories published in the United States during 1949. Nelson Algren and "The Man With the Golden Arm" won the Fiction award which is sometimes called "the first National Book Award for Fiction". Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt made the presentation. The novel is widely considered a classic of twentieth-century American literature. Writing of Algren and the novel, Kurt Vonnegut stated that "he was