NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

The National Book Award, established in 1950, is given each autumn in the United States by the National Book Foundation. A five-member, independent judging panel awards each winner a crystal sculpture and $10,000. 

2007 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Several characters, including CIA operatives, soldiers, and a nurse pursue their complex destinies over the course of the Vietnam War.

2006 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. A 27 year-old meat-packer suffers a car accident, then awakens from a coma, unable to believe that his family members are really who they say they are. A famous, insecure neurologist tries to help him. 

2005 Europe Central by William T. Vollmann. The German army's advance into Russia in 1941 and its defeat at Stalingrad wreaks havoc upon the lives of a huge cast of historical and mythological characters.

2004 The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck. A 19th century Irish courtesan keeps a diary of her exploits as the mistress of the dictator of Paraguay who wants to transform his country into a place exactly like France.

2003 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. An Englishman posted to Japan as part of the occupying forces right after the WWII atomic bombings becomes dangerously involved with the troubled children of a scheming Australian officer.

2002 Three Junes by Julia Glass. Each of three characters experiences a memorable month of June: an old Scotsman, his gay son who owns a bookstore, and a pregnant young widow who is an artist.

2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. The long-suffering mom of a crazily dysfunctional family struggles to reunite her wayward grown children for one more Christmas before their intimidating dad succumbs to dementia.

2000 In America by Susan Sontag.  In 1876, a stage actress decides to abandon her career to start a badly flawed utopia in California.

1999 Waiting by Ha Jin. A married army doctor in Communist China cannot start a new life with his beloved until his wife grants him a divorce – a boon that he begs of her every year for 18 years when he visits their remote village.

1998 Charming Billy by Alice McDermott. Upon the death of her alcoholic uncle, a young woman pieces together the real story of a tragic love affair that he experienced after WW II.

1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. A Confederate soldier stranded after the war must walk home through wilderness and strange encounters with lost souls in this update of The Odyssey.

1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett.  This collection of short stories illuminates the lives of outcasts from society.

1995 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth. An obnoxious old puppeteer reflects on his long life of depravity that took its first turn for the worse when his brother got killed in WW II.

1994 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis.  A college professor sues a Hollywood producer for allegedly stealing his play in this comedy about American society's fascination with lawsuits.

1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. A painfully shy newspaper writer loses his unfaithful wife and retreats with his aunt and two daughters to his ancestral home on Newfoundland where he becomes drawn into the lives of the eccentric locals.  Also won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize.

1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. In the 1950s, two Texas boys cross the border into Mexico, pursuing a romantic dream of the cowboy life and finding cold-blooded reality instead.

1991 Mating by Norman Rush. A graduate student struggling with a blocked thesis travels to Africa, runs across a mysterious utopia of women, and finds herself wildly attracted to the man who founded it. 

1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. In 1830, a black con man stows away on a ship, not knowing that its evil crew is bound for Africa to abduct a mysterious and vengeful tribe of magicians and bring them back as slaves.

1989 Spartina by John Casey.  A retired commercial fisherman in Rhode Island takes a foolish risk in order to earn the money necessary to fulfill his dream of completing the half-finished boat that languishes in his back yard.

1988 Paris Trout by Pete Dexter. Just after WW II, an evil white storekeeper murders a young black girl, and his trial tears his small Southern town apart.

1987 Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann. A young Vietnam veteran, the horribly disfigured sole survivor of an attack that destroyed his unit, drifts into town and gets a dish washing job but cannot escape the ghosts of his memory. 

1986 World's Fair by E. L. Doctorow.  In 1939, a young boy growing up in New York City awakens to his own place in an increasingly complex universe that includes the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany.

1985 White Noise by Don DeLillo. A hapless professor of "Hitler Studies" submerges himself in the meaningless white noise of his suburban life and neurotic family to distract himself from his own impending death.

1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist. Fourteen interlocking short stories show the lives of a family of headstrong Southern women and their conniving men.

1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker. A young black woman tells through her prayers of her rise from a life of abuse and poverty. Also won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize.

1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike. The immature hero owns a thriving Toyota dealership, fantasizes about wife-swapping, and falters through a turbulent relationship with his son.  Also won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize. This is a continuation of Updike's Rabbit books about a former basketball star (not a baseball star as some think).

1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris. Three generations of Nebraska women live out their troubled lives.

1980 Sophie's Choice by William Styron.  A Southern boy with literary pretensions is drawn into a love triangle with a beautiful Catholic woman who survived imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp, and her mysterious and paranoid Jewish lover.

1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien. In this nod to "magic realism", a soldier walks away from the war in Vietnam, and trudges across Asia and Europe to reach the peace talks in Paris while the rest of his squad follow to bring him back. 

1978 Blood Tie by Mary Lee Settle. This novel examines the subtle interactions between a group of expatriates and Turks living together in a community along the Aegean sea.

1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner. An embittered older couple review together the husband's travel journal that details a painful trip they took 20 years ago to Denmark.

1976 JR by William Gaddis.  An 11 year-old boy in New York City invents a successful scheme to get rich quick.

1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.  A naïve journalist in Vietnam convinces an unstable Marine to smuggle heroin home for him, little knowing that the Marine and his own wife will find themselves set up and running for their lives from corrupt federal agents.

1974 Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. This bleak satire follows the surrealistic lives of workers assigned to a British center for covert operations during WW II.

1973 Augustus by John Williams.  A shy youth is forced to power in ancient Rome and becomes the great emperor Augustus.

1972 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor.  Short story perfection is achieved in this dark collection of Southern gothic marvels.

1971 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow. An aging Holocaust survivor sees it all in New York City but is shocked by nothing. Saul Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature.

1970 Them by Joyce Carol Oates. Murder and alcoholism shape a working class family's struggle to survive as their gritty hometown of Detroit mutates from the raw optimism of the post-WW II years to the surrealistic madness of the 1960s.

1969 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. A neurotic lawyer tells his psychiatrist all about how his overbearing Jewish mother has ruined his life.

1968 The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder. A murder investigation affects two families.

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud.  A Jewish handyman endures imprisonment and brutal oppression in Czarist Russia just before the First World War, but he never loses his sense of compassion for others.

1966 The Collected Stories of Katharine Anne Porter. A legendary master offers this collection of American classics.  

1965 Herzog by Saul Bellow. A Jewish intellectual who considers himself a misfit suffers the collapse of his marriage and starts writing letters to friends and enemies that analyze 20th century American society and his place in it. Saul Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature.

1964 The Centaur by John Updike.  Three days in the life of a gentle schoolteacher struggling to reconnect with his alienated son are interwoven with Greek myth: each of his acquaintances has a mythological counterpart in the parallel Chiron-Prometheus story. 

1963 Morte D'Urban by J. F. Powers. Underachieving Catholic priests attempt to convert the unbelievers in a small unappreciative Protestant town.

1962 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. A middle-aged Southern stockbroker worries about his cousin who is devastated by the death of her fiancé.

1961 Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter.  A man returns to his boyhood home.

1960 Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth. A working class Jewish boy has a difficult summer romance with a rich girl.

1959 The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud.
1958 The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever. 
1957 The Field of Vision by Wright Morris. 
1956 Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara. 
1955 A Fable by William Faulkner. Also won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize. 
William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

1954 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. 
Saul Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature.

1953 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. 
1952 From Here to Eternity by James Jones. 
1951 The Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner.  
William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

1950 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren.