We got a surprise this week when the Pulitzer Prizes were announced: two winners for fiction. This is the first time in history that two books have been honored with the Fiction Prize in the same year. Frankly, we sympathize. We wouldn't be able to choose either, considering what a great year it's been for literature.
Winners in other categories included Hua Hsu's Stay True for memoir, Carl Phillips' Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 for poetry, and Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa's His Name Is George Floyd for non-fiction. Vauhini Vara's The Immortal King Rao was the sole runner-up in the fiction category.
How many Pulitzer fiction winners have you read? We've compiled the full list below. Save some of these on your TBR — you can do that by hitting the bookmark button under the book cover — and you’ll never be without a solid read to check out next!
A masterful recasting of David Copperfield, narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them.
A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king.
1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
1964: No prize awarded
1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
1957: No prize awarded
1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
1954: No prize awarded
1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie
1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
1946: No prize awarded
1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
1941: No prize awarded
1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
1933: The Store by T. S. Stribling
1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
1925: So Big by Edna Ferber
1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather
1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
1920: No prize awarded
1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1918: His Family by Ernest Poole