I’m a little obsessed with the National Book Award for Fiction. I honestly treat it like the Academy Awards or the Grammys. Every year I enter a pool with my colleagues, betting on which novel I think will win. I’ve never guessed correctly, but that’s beside the point. The point, of course, is that the National Book Award for Fiction is highly prestigious and a great indicator of excellent literature. Here are 11 of the many fiction winners you should definitely read.
11 National Book Award-Winning Novels to Read Before You Die
The Good Lord Bird
2013 Winner
THE GOOD LORD BIRD is the story of Henry Shackleford, a young boy born a slave in the Kansas Territory who joins legendary abolitionist John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with James McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character.
The Good Lord Bird
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The Round House
2012 Winner
THE ROUND HOUSE transports readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota as a boy on the cusp of manhood seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends his family. This greatly beloved novel is a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender novel of family, history, and culture.
The Round House
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Salvage the Bones
2011 Winner
Set in the 12 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s arrival in Mississippi, SALVAGE THE BONES follows a family of motherless children as they do everything they can to protect and care for each other. It’s a stunning and heart-wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty.
Salvage the Bones
Set in the 12 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s arrival in Mississippi, a family of motherless children do everything they can to protect and care for each other. SALVAGE THE BONES is a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty.
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Lord of Misrule
2010 Winner
LORD OF MISRULE is a brilliant novel that captures the dusty, dark, and glamorous world of small-time horse racing in which trainers, jockeys, grooms, and grifters vie for what little luck is offered at a rundown West Virginia track.
Lord of Misrule
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Let the Great World Spin
2009 Winner
It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the Twin Towers. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
Let the Great World Spin
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Tree of Smoke
2007 Winner
One of the best books of 2007, TREE OF SMOKE is the riveting story of a CIA agent engaged in disastrous Psychological Operations against the Vietcong, and of the Houston brothers who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war where the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away.
Tree of Smoke
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The News from Paraguay
2004 Winner
It’s 1854 in Paris and the future dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano, has just begun his courtship of a young, beautiful Irish courtesan. When Ella follows Franco to Asunción, she finds herself isolated and embraces her lover’s ill-fated imperial dream. Readers of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa will love this rich and intimate narrative.
The News from Paraguay
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Three Junes
2002 Winner
THREE JUNES traces the lives of a Scottish family for more than a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In prose rich with compassion and wit, this astonishing first novel paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.
Three Junes
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The Shipping News
1993 WInner
A third-rate newspaperman moves himself and his two daughters to the coast of Newfoundland after his wife passes away. As Quoyle restarts his life and settles further into the community, he begins to find a new and much more rewarding life, but he also learns deep and troubling secrets about his ancestors. A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family. Tonight at the NBA ceremony, Annie Proulx is receiving the Lifetime Acheivement Award—24 years after THE SHIPPING NEWS won the 1993 National Book Award for Fiction.
The Shipping News
Awarded the prize in 1994, THE SHIPPING NEWS is an enchanting look at the contemporary American family. When a third-rate newspaper hack’s cheating wife dies, he and his daughters move to Newfoundland, where they must face their personal demons as a long winter closes in.
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All the Pretty Horses
1992 Winner
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at 16 finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
All the Pretty Horses
Amarillo, TX: This winner of the National Book Award for Fiction tells the story of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers. He sets off from Texas to Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey.
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Middle Passage
1990 Winner
Desperate to escape the city’s unscrupulous bill collectors and a schoolteacher hell-bent on marrying him, newly freed slave Rutherford Calhoun jumps aboard a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe. Thus begins a voyage of metaphysical horror and human atrocity, a journey that challenges our notions of freedom, fate, and how we live together.
Middle Passage
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