Archive Collection
National Book Award for Fiction Winners
1950–2025
The National Book Award for Fiction is one of America's most prestigious literary prizes, awarded annually since 1950 to a novel of exceptional literary merit. Winners include Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, and Jesmyn Ward.
About the National Book Award for Fiction
- Awarded by
- National Book Foundation
- First awarded
- 1950
- Country
- United States
- Winner receives
- $10,000
When it is announced
Winners are announced at a ceremony in November, after a longlist in September and finalists in October. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Publishers submit, for a fee, and the author must be a United States citizen. Submissions usually open in the spring and close in the summer.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) | The True True Story of Raja the Gullible won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2025, the capstone recognition for Rabih Alameddine, the Lebanese… |
| 2024 | James | James won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The board's citation called it "an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn that gives agency… |
| 2023 | Blackouts | Blackouts won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2023, twelve years after Justin Torres's incandescent autobiographical debut We the Animals, a… |
| 2022 | The Rabbit Hutch | The Rabbit Hutch won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2022, a debut winning the year's biggest prize, and added the inaugural Waterstones Debut… |
| 2021 | Hell of a Book | Hell of a Book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2021, and its win completed an unusual arc: Jason Mott had been a bestselling but not prize… |
| 2020 | Interior Chinatown | Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2020, the ceremony itself conducted over video in the pandemic's first year, and the… |
| 2019 | Trust Exercise | Trust Exercise won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019, the most argued about win of its era in exactly the way the novel invites: readers… |
| 2018 | The Friend | The Friend won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018, and it was the sweetest kind of prize story: Sigrid Nunez was sixty seven, seven novels… |
| 2017 | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Sing, Unburied, Sing won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2017, making Jesmyn Ward the first woman, and the first Black American, to win the… |
| 2016 | The Underground Railroad | The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in a citation praising a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the… |
| 2015 | Fortune Smiles | Fortune Smiles won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2015 and The Story Prize, arriving two years after The Orphan Master's Son had won Adam… |
| 2014 | Redeployment | Redeployment won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2014, a debut collection beating the year's novels, and it was received almost immediately as… |
| 2013 | The Good Lord Bird | The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013, an upset over the season's favorites, and the judges' comparison to Mark Twain… |
| 2012 | The Round House | The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012, and it arrived with a public purpose declared in the afterword: the jurisdictional… |
| 2011 | Salvage the Bones | Salvage the Bones won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2011, a decision that surprised the handicappers and now looks like the prize doing its… |
| 2010 | Lord of Misrule | Lord of Misrule won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2010 in the great modern shock result: Jaimy Gordon was a sixty six year old writing… |
| 2009 | Let the Great World Spin | Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2009 and the International Dublin Literary Award after it, and its reception… |
| 2008 | Shadow Country | Shadow Country won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2008, and the award carried an asterisk that became its distinction: the book is a rewrite.… |
| 2007 | Tree of Smoke | Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007 and was a Pulitzer finalist, arriving as an event: Denis Johnson, the poet of American… |
| 2006 | The Echo Maker | The Echo Maker won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2006 and was a Pulitzer finalist, the largest recognition to that point for Richard Powers,… |
| 2005 | Europe Central | Europe Central won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005, the establishment's embrace of American letters' great outlier: William T. Vollmann… |
| 2004 | The News from Paraguay | The News from Paraguay won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2004, the stormiest year in the prize's modern history: all five finalists were… |
| 2003 | The Great Fire | Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Great Fire in 2003, twenty three years after The Transit of Venus, and Virago brought it out in Britain. It… |
| 2002 | Three Junes | Three Junes won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2002, and it was the year's genuine surprise: a first novel by a forty six year old former… |
| 2001 | The Corrections | The Corrections won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2001, was a Pulitzer finalist, and became one of the most talked about American novels of… |
| 2000 | In America | In America won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2000, the biggest literary prize Susan Sontag ever received for fiction, and it arrived… |
| 1999 | Waiting | Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1999 and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a Pulitzer finalist; before Jin, the fiction prize had… |
| 1998 | Charming Billy | Charming Billy won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1998, an upset the papers enjoyed: the quietest book on a shortlist that included Tom… |
| 1997 | Cold Mountain | Cold Mountain won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1997, a first novel beating Don DeLillo's Underworld, a decision argued about ever since,… |
| 1996 | Ship Fever and Other Stories | Ship Fever won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1996, one of the prize's genuine surprises: a quiet collection of science haunted stories from… |
| 1995 | Sabbath's Theater | Sabbath's Theater won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1995, thirty five years after Goodbye, Columbus had won Roth his first, the longest span… |
| 1994 | A Frolic of His Own | A Frolic of His Own won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1994, giving William Gaddis his second, eighteen years after J R, and placing him in… |
| 1993 | The Shipping News | The Shipping News won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1993 National Book Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. It was Annie… |
| 1992 | All the Pretty Horses | All the Pretty Horses won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1992 and the National Book Critics Circle Award besides, and it changed the shape of… |
| 1991 | Mating | Mating won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1991, a first novel Norman Rush published in his fifties. He and his wife Elsa had spent five years… |
| 1990 | Middle Passage | Middle Passage won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990, making Charles Johnson the first African American man to win it since Ralph Ellison… |
| 1989 | Spartina | Spartina won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1989, and the New York Times Book Review supplied the blurb it has carried since, calling it… |
| 1988 | Paris Trout | Paris Trout won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1988, and its origins are journalism: Pete Dexter, then a newspaper columnist, had lived in… |
| 1987 | Paco's Story | Paco's Story won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1987 in the prize's most argued upset: Toni Morrison's Beloved was the overwhelming… |
| 1986 | World's Fair | World's Fair won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1986, and it was E. L. Doctorow's most openly personal book: the novelist was born Edgar, in… |
| 1985 | White Noise | White Noise won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1985 and was the breakout: Don DeLillo had published seven brilliant, thinly read novels in… |
| 1984 | Victory over Japan | Victory over Japan won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1984, a second collection beating the year's novels, and it confirmed the arrival that… |
| 1983 | The Color Purple | The Color Purple won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, and Alice Walker became the first Black woman to receive the… |
| 1982 | Rabbit Is Rich | Rabbit Is Rich took the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award and the 1981 National Book Critics Circle Award, a sweep of all… |
| 1981 | Plains Song: For Female Voices | Plains Song won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1981, twenty four years after Wright Morris's The Field of Vision had won it, one of the… |
| 1980 | Sophie's Choice | Published in 1979, Sophie's Choice won the 1980 National Book Award for Fiction. It also generated an argument that has never entirely settled.… |
| 1979 | Going After Cacciato | Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979, beating, among others, John Irving's The World According to Garp, an upset that… |
| 1978 | Blood Tie | Blood Tie won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1978, making Mary Lee Settle only the fourth woman in the fiction prize's twenty eight winners,… |
| 1977 | The Spectator Bird | The Spectator Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1977, five years after Angle of Repose had taken the Pulitzer, and the two novels are… |
| 1976 | J R | J R won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1976, two decades after The Recognitions, William Gaddis's near thousand page debut, had been… |
| 1975 | The Hair of Harold Roux | The 1975 National Book Award for Fiction went to two books, and the National Book Foundation still records both as winners: Williams's novel and… |
| 1975 | Dog Soldiers | Dog Soldiers shared the 1975 National Book Award for Fiction with Thomas Williams's The Hair of Harold Roux, the third split in three years, and Time… |
| 1974 | Gravity's Rainbow | Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction with Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers, and Pynchon, already the most… |
| 1974 | A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories | A Crown of Feathers shared the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction with Gravity's Rainbow, and the split is the list's most delicious: the most… |
| 1973 | Chimera | Chimera shared the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973 with John Williams's Augustus, the first time the fiction prize was split, and a neater… |
| 1973 | Augustus | Augustus shared the 1973 National Book Award for Fiction with John Barth's Chimera, the award's first split, and the pairing has become a parable… |
| 1972 | The Complete Stories | The Complete Stories won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1972, seven years after Flannery O'Connor's death, and in 2009, when the award's… |
| 1971 | Mr. Sammler's Planet | Mr. Sammler's Planet won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1971, completing Bellow's unmatched three, and it has been among his most contested… |
| 1970 | them | them won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1970, the capstone of an arrival unlike any other in American letters: Joyce Carol Oates was thirty… |
| 1969 | Steps | Steps won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1969. Hugh Kenner reached for Kafka and Céline; decades later David Foster Wallace called it… |
| 1968 | The Eighth Day | The Eighth Day won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1968, and it was his first novel in nearly twenty years: he wrote it over twenty months of… |
| 1967 | The Fixer | The Fixer won both the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1967 National Book Award, Bernard Malamud's second National Book Award after The Magic… |
| 1966 | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter won both the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1966 National Book Award. It works as a career… |
| 1965 | Herzog | Herzog won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1965, Bellow's second of three, and did something none of his books had done: it became an unlikely… |
| 1964 | The Centaur | The Centaur won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1964, choosing Updike's strangest book over safer candidates, and the reviews split exactly as… |
| 1963 | Morte d'Urban | Morte d'Urban won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1963, a first novel by a writer the short story world already treated as a master: J. F.… |
| 1962 | The Moviegoer | The Moviegoer won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962 in the prize's most storied upset: Knopf had barely promoted the first novel, and the… |
| 1961 | The Waters of Kronos | The Waters of Kronos won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1961, giving Conrad Richter both of America's major fiction prizes within a decade,… |
| 1960 | Goodbye, Columbus | Goodbye, Columbus won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1960, while Philip Roth was still in his twenties, among the youngest winners the… |
| 1959 | The Magic Barrel | The Magic Barrel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1959, a short story collection beating the year's novels, which the award's history shows… |
| 1958 | The Wapshot Chronicle | The Wapshot Chronicle won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1958. It was Cheever's first novel, arriving when he was already the New Yorker's… |
| 1957 | The Field of Vision | The Field of Vision won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1957, high modernist technique carrying off the prize in a decade that mostly rewarded… |
| 1956 | Ten North Frederick | Ten North Frederick won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1956 and was among the ten bestselling novels of its year, the peak of John O'Hara's… |
| 1955 | A Fable | A Fable won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1955, the fullest official endorsement American letters could give,… |
| 1954 | The Adventures of Augie March | The Adventures of Augie March won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1954, the first of Saul Bellow's three, a record for the fiction prize he… |
| 1953 | Invisible Man | Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ralph Ellison the first Black writer to take the award, one year after the… |
| 1952 | From Here to Eternity | From Here to Eternity won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1952, was a massive bestseller, and sold to Hollywood for a reported 82,500 dollars,… |
| 1951 | The Collected Stories of William Faulkner | The Collected Stories won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1951, in the immediate afterglow of the Nobel Prize Faulkner had accepted in… |
| 1950 | The Man with the Golden Arm | The Man with the Golden Arm won the first National Book Award for Fiction, in 1950, which puts Nelson Algren permanently at the head of the list this… |