Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

2013 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

2010 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Tinkers

by Paul Harding

2009 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

2008 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

by Junot Díaz

2007 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 civil… read more

2006 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

2005 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Ch… read more

2003 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

2001 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

1999 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

1998 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Independence Day

by Richard Ford

1995 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

1993 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain

by Robert Olen Butler

1992 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Beloved  (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison. Morrison was inspired to write the story after finding a newspaper article about the legal case of Margaret Garner. Garner escaped slavery in Kentucky to the free State of O… read more

1987 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 fil… read more

1985 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Foreign Affairs

by Alison Lurie

1984 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Ironweed

by William Kennedy

The third novel in William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle series, Ironweed (1983) is set during the Great Depression. It follows Francis Phelan, a drifter from Albany, New York. After a devastating accident where he killed his child, he becomes a wan… read more

1983 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

This novel is noteworthy for its portrayal of Gary Gilmore, a violent product of America's prisons who became known for two reasons: first for robbing and murdering two men in 1976, and second, after being tried and convicted, he insisting on dying … read more

1979 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

1970 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Collected Stories

by Jean Stafford

1969 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

House Made Of Dawn

by N Scott Momaday

1968 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Somerse… read more

1963 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Edge Of Sadness

by Edwin O'Connor

1961 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

1956 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Andersonville

by McKinlay Kantor

1955 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Old Man and The Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

This novella, only 140 pages, was first printed in its entirety in Life Magazine on September 1, 1952. It inspired a buying frenzy - selling over five million copies of the magazine in just two days! The story about an aging Cuban fisherman w… read more

1952 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Town

by Conrad Richter

1950 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Way West

by A B , Jr Guthrie

1949 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Journey In the Dark

by Martin Flavin

1943 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Dragon's Teeth

by Upton Sinclair

1942 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

In This Our Life

by Ellen Glasgow

1940 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Honey In the Horn

by Harold L Davis

1934 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Store

by Stribling T S

1932 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Years Of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1930 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Laughing Boy

by Oliver La Farge

1929 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Early Autumn

by Louis Bromfield

1926 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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

1925 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

So Big

by Edna Ferber

1924 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Able McLaughlins

by Margaret Wilson

1923 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 … read more

1919 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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 … read more

1918 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

His Family

by Ernest Poole

0000 Winner Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Travels Of Jaimie McPheeters

by Robert Lewis Taylor