The Pale King is an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace. It was published after David’s death on April 15, 2011.
It was proposed as Wallace’s third publication, and the first since Infinite Jest in 1996, but it was not completed in the time of his passing. Before his departure at 2008, Wallace coordinated the manuscript and associated computer files at a place where they could be found by his widow, Karen Green along with his representative, Bonnie Nadell.
This book was compiled by his friend and editor Michael Pietsch into the form which was finally published.
Wallace was working on the novel for over a decade. Even incomplete, The Pale King is a long work, using 50 chapters of varying length totaling over 500 pages.
The publication was among the 3 finalists for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but no award has been awarded that year.