Furman University home page
Book Awards: National Book Award
About the award
The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture.
From 1986 to 1990, independent panels of writers chose the National Book Award Winners in the categories of only Fiction and Nonfiction. The National Book Foundation reinstituted the Poetry Award in 1991 and launched the Award for Young People’s Literature in 1996. In 2013, the judging panels were opened to non-writers with significant literary expertise in each category.
Award for Fiction
| 2021: Hell of a Book by Jason Mott 2020: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu 2019: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi |
| 2018: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo |
| 2017: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward |
| 2016: March: Book Three by John Lewis |
| 2015: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates |
| 2014: Redeployment by Phil Klay |
| 2013: The Good Lord Bird by James McBride |
| 2012: The Round House by Louise Erdrich |
| 2011: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward |
| 2010: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon |
| 2009: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann |
| 2008: Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen |
| 2007: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson |
| 2006: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers |
| 2005: Europe Central by William T. Vollmann |
| 2004: The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck |
| 2003: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard |
| 2002: Three Junes by Julia Glass |
| 2001: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen |
| 2000: In America by Susan Sontag |
| 1999: Waiting by Ha Jin |
| 1998: Charming Billy by Alice McDermott |
| 1997: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier |
| 1996: Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett |
| 1995: Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth |
| 1994: A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis |
| 1993: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx |
| 1992: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy |
| 1991: Mating by Norman Rush |
| 1990: Middle Passage by Charles Johnson |
| 1989: Spartina by John Casey |
| 1988: Paris Trout by Pete Dexter |
| 1987: Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann |
| 1986: World's Fair by E. L. Doctorow |
| 1985: White Noise by Don DeLillo |
| 1984: Victory over Japan: A Book of Stories by Ellen Gilchrist |
| … |
| 1979: Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien |
| 1978: Blood Tie by Mary Lee Settle |
| 1977: The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner |
| 1976: JR by William Gaddis |
| 1975: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone |
| 1974: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon |
| 1973: Chimera by John Barth |
| 1972: The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor |
| 1971: Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow |
| 1970: Them by Joyce Carol Oates |
| 1969: Steps by Jerzy Kosinski |
| 1968: The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder |
| 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud |
| 1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1965: Herzog by Saul Bellow |
| 1964: The Centaur by John Updike |
| 1963: Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers |
| 1962: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy |
| 1961: The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter |
| 1960: Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth |
| 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 |
| 1954: The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow |
| 1953: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison |
| 1952: From Here to Eternity by James Jones |
| 1951: The Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner |
| 1950: The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren |
Fiction (Hardcover)
1980: Sophie's Choice by William Styron
1981: Plains Song by Wright Morris
1982: Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Fiction (Paperback)
1980: The World According to Garp by John Irving
1981: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
1982: So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
1983: Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
Award for Fiction
Fiction (Hardcover)
Sophie's Choice by ISBN: 9780679602897Publication Date: 1998-03-10
