Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The History of the Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is possibly the best-known award given for excellence in journalism and the arts. Originally founded in 1917 after famed journalist Joseph Pulitzer, the winners of the seven categories of the Pulitzer Prizes are widely regarded as the most talented and esteemed professionals of their field.
Joseph Pulitzer built a reputation as an esteemed reporter and chess player, and became a publisher at the tender age of 25. After years exposing institutional injustice and encouraging literary achievements, Pulitzer died in 1911. But before he died, Pulitzer made sure to include in his will a gift to Columbia University for the amount of $500,000 to be "applied to prizes of scholarships for the encouragement of public, service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education". In accordance with his wishes, the Pulitzer Prizes were first awarded in 1917, and the first Pulitzer Prize for Novel was awarded in 1918 to Ernest Poole for his book, His Family.Controversial Winners for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Since all literary awards are purely subjective choices made by a panel of judges, disagreement and controversy is inevitable. For many years, the Pulitzer Prize was not given to works that were overly morose or that contained particularly harsh language, even if the novel was brilliant. One good example of this phenomenon is Ernest Hemingway: He won the Pulitzer in 1952 for The Old Man and the Sea, but lost the Pulitzer in 1941 For Whom the Bell Tolls. Even though The Old Man and the Sea was arguably Hemingway's lesser work, it was not as violent as For Whom the Bell Tolls, so it made the judges a bit more comfortable.
Pulitzer was very clear that should no work be deemed significant enough to merit an award, the Pulitzer Prize may not be given that particular year. Although uncommon, there have indeed been years when the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has not been awarded.
2013 Winner
The Orphan Master's Son By Adam Johnson
Adam Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and Playboy, as well as The Best American Short Stories . His other works include Emporium... read more
2011 Winner
Visit From the Goon Squad By Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and he... read more
2009 Winner
Olive Kitteridge By Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge (2008) is a novel by American author Elizabeth Strout. It is a collection of 13 connected short stories about a woman named Olive and her immediate family and friends in the town of Crosby in coastal Maine. It is also known as On the... read more
2007 Winner
The Road By Cormac McCarthy
The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civiliz... read more
2006 Winner
March By Geraldine Brooks
As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. ... read more
2004 Winner
The Known World By T Coraghessan Boyle
The Known World is a 2003 historical novel by Edward P. Jones. It was his first novel and second book. Set in antebellum Virginia, it examines issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by free black people as well as by whites. A book with many ... read more
2003 Winner
Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan, the son of an American-born father whose Greek parents emigrated from Asia Minor and an American mother of Anglo-Irish descent. After graduating from Brown University and Stanford University, ... read more
2002 Winner
Empire Falls By Richard Paul Russo
2001 Winner
The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay By Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. The novel follows the lives of the title characters, a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn... read more
2000 Winner
Interpreter Of Maladies By Jhumpa Lahiri
Interpreter of Maladies is a 2000 collection of nine short stories by Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. It was also chosen as The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Yea... read more
1998 Winner
American Pastoral By Philip Roth
American Pastoral is a Philip Roth novel concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Jewish-American businessman and former high school athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class life is ruined by the dom... read more
1996 Winner
Independence Day By Richard Ford
1995 Winner
The Stone Diaries By Carol Shields
The Stone Diaries is a 1993 award winning novel by Carol Shields. It is the fictional autobiography about the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies dur... read more
1994 Winner
The Shipping News By Proulx E Annie
Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. The novel centers on Quoyle, a third-rate hack journalist who lives an... read more
1992 Winner
A Thousand Acres By Jane Smiley
A Thousand Acres is a 1991 novel by American author Jane Smiley. It won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted to a 1997 film of the same name. The novel is a contemporary deconstruction of Shakespeare's King Lear and is set on a tho... read more
1991 Winner
Rabbit At Rest By John Updike
Rabbit at Rest is a 1990 novel by John Updike. It is the fourth and final novel in a series beginning with Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, and Rabbit is Rich. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fi... read more
1990 Winner
The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love By Oscar Hijuelos
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a 1989 novel by Oscar Hijuelos. It is about the lives of two Cuban brothers and musicians, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who immigrate to the United States and settle in New York City in the early 1950s. The novel w... read more
1989 Winner
Breathing Lessons By Anne Tyler
Breathing Lessons is a 1988 novel by American author Anne Tyler. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989 and was also Time Magazine's book of the year. It describes joys and pains of the ordinary marriage of Ira and Maggie Moran as they tra... read more
1988 Winner
Beloved By Toni Morrison
Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison. The novel is based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner. The slavery of the American south is bared in this transfixing tale. Sethe was born a slave, and e... read more
1987 Winner
A Summons To Memphis By Peter Taylor
A Summons to Memphis is a 1986 novel by Peter Taylor which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987. It is the recollection of Phillip Carver, a middle aged editor from New York City, who is summoned back to Memphis by his two conniving unmarried s... read more
1986 Winner
Lonesome Dove By Larry McMurtry
An epic story of two retired Texas Rangers on a cattle drive to Montana that is loosely basedon historic events from the 19th century, the original Lonesome Dove story was written to be a screenplay called "The Streets of Laredo.” The 1970s film wa... read more
1984 Winner
Ironweed By William Kennedy
Ironweed is a 1983 novel by William Kennedy. It received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is part of Kennedy's Albany Cycle. It placed at number ninety-two on the Modern Library list of the 100 Best Novels written in English in the 20th Ce... read more
1983 Winner
The Color Purple By Alice Walker
The Color Purple is an acclaimed epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, this collection of letters weaves an intricate mosaic of women joined by their love for each other, the men who abuse them, and ... read more
1982 Winner
Rabbit Is Rich By John Updike
Rabbit Is Rich is a 1981 novel by John Updike. It is the third novel of the four-part series which begins with Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, and concludes with Rabbit At Rest. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. Rabbit Is Rich wa... read more
1981 Winner
A Confederacy Of Dunces By John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a revealing foreword) and... read more
1980 Winner
The Executioner's Song By Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice . He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead ; The Armies... read more
1979 Winner
The Stories Of John Cheever By John Cheever
The Stories of John Cheever is a 1978 short story collection by American author John Cheever. It contains some of his most famous stories, including "The Enormous Radio," "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Country Husband," &qu... read more
1976 Winner
Humboldt's Gift By Saul Bellow
Humboldt's Gift is a novel by Saul Bellow that tells of the balance of art and power in an ever-increasingly materialistic America. The tale is shown through a semi-autobiographical account of Bellow's friendship with a poet, Delmore Schwartz. ... read more
1975 Winner
The Killer Angels By Michael Shaara
The Killer Angels is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the U... read more
1973 Winner
The Optimist's Daughter By Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mis-sissippi, in 1909. She was educated locally and at Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Her short stories appeared in The Sout... read more
1972 Winner
Angle Of Repose By Wallace Stegner
Angle of Repose is a 1972 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Wallace Stegner about a wheelchair-using historian, Lyman Ward, who has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents. It wo... read more
1969 Winner
House Made Of Dawn By N Scott Momaday
1968 Winner
The Confessions Of Nat Turner By William Styron
The Confessions of Nat Turner is the title of two books: The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrections in Southampton, Va. , an 1831 book written after Nat Turner's trial by his lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray The Confessions of ... read more
1967 Winner
The Fixer By Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was an author of novels and short stories. His novel, The Eighth Day was the winner of the National Book Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1967. In this fictionalized account of... read more
1966 Winner
The Collected Stories Of Katherine Anne Porter By Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter born as Callie Russell Porter in Indian Creek, Texas, was the fourth of five children of Harrison Boone Porter and Alice Porter. Her family tree can be traced back to American frontiersman Daniel Boone. She was a Pulitzer Prize... read more
1965 Winner
The Keepers Of the House By Shirley Ann Grau
Keepers of the House is the debut novel of Lisa St Aubin de Terán, published as The Long Way Home in the US. The novel is autobiographical and set in a Venezuelan valley beset by drought. First published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape it won the Somerset ... read more
1963 Winner
The Reivers By William Faulkner
The Reivers, published in 1962, is the last novel by the American author William Faulkner. The bestselling novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1963. Faulkner previously won this award for his book A Fable, making him one of only three... read more
1962 Winner
The Edge Of Sadness By Edwin O'Connor
1961 Winner
To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of... read more
1960 Winner
Advise and Consent By Allen Drury
Advise and Consent is a 1959 political novel written by Allen Drury which explores the reactions of those in and around the United States Senate to the controversial nomination of Robert Leffingwell, a former Communist Party member, to be United Stat... read more
1958 Winner
A Death In the Family By James Agee
A Death in the Family is an autobiographical novel by author James Agee, set in Knoxville, Tennessee. He began writing it in 1948, but it was not quite complete when he died in 1955. It was edited and released posthumously in 1957 by editor David McD... read more
1955 Winner
A Fable By William Faulkner
A Fable is a novel written in 1954 by the American author William Faulkner, which won him both the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award in 1955. Despite these recognitions, however, the novel received mixed critical reviews and a reputation as ... read more
1953 Winner
The Old Man and The Sea By Ernest Hemingway
This novella, only 140 pages, was first printed in it's entirety in Life Magazine Sept 1st 1952, inspiring a buying frenzy selling over 5 million copies of the magazine in just 2 days. The story about an aging Cuban fisherman wrangling a large mar... read more
1952 Winner
The Caine Mutiny By Herman Wouk
For the Broadway play, see The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. The Caine Mutiny is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and... read more
1951 Winner
The Town By Conrad Richter
1950 Winner
Way West By A B , Jr Guthrie
1949 Winner
Guard Of Honor By James Gould Cozzens
for the ceremonial guard see Guard of honour Guard of Honor is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by James Gould Cozzens published in 1948. The novel is set during World War II, with most of the action occurring on or near a fictional Army Air Forces bas... read more
1948 Winner
Tales Of the South Pacific By James a Michener
Tales of the South Pacific is a Pulitzer Prize winning collection of sequentially related short stories about World War II, written by James A. Michener in 1946. The stories were based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a l... read more
1947 Winner
All the King's Men By Robert Penn Warren
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1946. The novel's title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men. It was adapted for film in 1949 a... read more
1945 Winner
A Bell For Adano By John Hersey
A Bell for Adano is a film directed by Henry King starring John Hodiak and Gene Tierney. The film was adapted from the novel A Bell for Adano by John Hersey, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. The story concerns Italian-American U.S. Army Major Jo... read more
1944 Winner
Journey In the Dark By Martin Flavin
1942 Winner
In This Our Life By Ellen Glasgow
1940 Winner
The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath stands as a pivotal piece of American literature. The story follows the Joad family (and thousands of others) as they are driven from the Oklahoma farm where they are sharecroppers during the Great Depression. ... read more
1939 Winner
The Yearling By Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Yearling is a 1938 novel written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939. Rawlings's editor was Maxwell Perkins, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary luminaries. S... read more
1937 Winner
Gone With the Wind By Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell only published one complete novel, but it was quite the book - Gone With the Wind earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and National Book Award for 1936. The epic romance tale set in and around Atlanta, Georgia during the American C... read more
1936 Winner
Honey In the Horn By Harold L Davis
1934 Winner
Lamb In His Bosom By Caroline Miller
Lamb in His Bosom is a 1933 novel by Caroline Miller. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1934. It also won the Prix Femina in 1934 and became an immediate best-seller. Many names and historical parts of this book were contributed by William A... read more
1933 Winner
The Store By Stribling T S
1932 Winner
Good Earth By Pearl S Buck
The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Pearl S. Buck , an American writer who spent the bulk of the first part of her life in China. Set in the Anhui Province where Buck once lived, it chronicles the rise and fall of Wang Lung and his... read more
1931 Winner
Years Of Grace By Margaret Ayer Barnes
1930 Winner
Laughing Boy By Oliver La Farge
1929 Winner
Scarlet Sister Mary By Julia Peterkin
Scarlet Sister Mary is a 1928 novel by Julia Peterkin. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1929. It was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, South Carolina. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the c... read more
1928 Winner
Bridge Of San Luis Rey By Thornton Wilder
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and... read more
1927 Winner
Early Autumn By Louis Bromfield
1926 Winner
Arrowsmith By Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University in 1908. His college career was interrupted by various part-time occupations, including a period working at the Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair&rsquo... read more
1924 Winner
The Able McLaughlins By Margaret Wilson
1923 Winner
One Of Ours By Willa Cather
One of Ours is a novel by Willa Cather which won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a native of Nebraska around the turn of the 20th century. The son of a successful mid-western farmer and an intensely pious mo... read more
1922 Winner
Alice Adams By Booth Tarkington
This compelling satire details irresistible characteristics of social status in a small Midwestern town. Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their two children are members of the lower middle-class. Their daughter, Alice, wrestles with this economic classificatio... read more
1921 Winner
The Age Of Innocence By Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s, during the so-called Gilded Age. The novel, which takes its title from artist Joshua Reynolds’ 1785 painting of a little girl, focuses on impending marriage o... read more
1919 Winner
The Magnificent Ambersons By Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons is the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which includes The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States throu... read more
1918 Winner
His Family By Ernest Poole
0000 Winner
