Award Winning Books About Immigration and Exile

Leaving one country for another is the story behind a striking share of prize winning writing, partly because so many of the writers lived it. These books cover arrival and what comes after, the language that has to be learned and the home that stops being home.

52 books drawn from 14 prize lists, newest first.

• 2025 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
• 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
• 2024 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  Soldiers and Kings by Jason De León
• 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Tripas: Poems by Brandon Som
• 2023 The Booker Prize
  Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
• 2022 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
• 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
  How to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil
• 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin
• 2017 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Desert by J. M. G. Le Clézio
• 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• 2008 Women's Prize for Fiction
  The Road Home by Rose Tremain
• 2007 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• 2006 The Booker Prize
  The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
• 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
• 2004 Women's Prize for Fiction
  Small Island by Andrea Levy
• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• 2003 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• 2003 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
• 2001 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2000 National Book Award for Fiction
  In America by Susan Sontag
• 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov by Stacy Schiff
• 2000 Women's Prize for Fiction
  When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
• 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
• 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller
• 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
• 1997 Women's Prize for Fiction
  Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
• 1994 Caldecott Medal
  Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say
• 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
• 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
• 1989 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
• 1987 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
• 1981 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston
• 1977 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe
• 1976 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan
• 1974 National Book Award for Fiction
  A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• 1971 The Booker Prize
  In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul
• 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Only Yesterday by Shmuel Agnon
• 1959 National Book Award for Fiction
  The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
• 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin
• 1941 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen
• 1933 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Life of Arseniev by Ivan Bunin
• 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  From Immigrant to Inventor by Michael I. Pupin
• 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  The Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward Bok
• 1918 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  My Ántonia by Willa Cather
• 1906 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Jungle by Upton Sinclair