The 2023 Kirkus Prize

Winner for Fiction: The New York Times (and everybody else) fell head over heels for the National Book Award winner’s latest, calling the sprawling literary caper "a murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel…charming, smart, heart-blistering and heart-healing."

Winner for Nonfiction: A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist decodes the term “latino,” one of the most misunderstood racial and ethnic catchalls in the United States. The Atlantic found an exploration of Latinx identity that “engages in contemporary debates and issues, such as how Latinos have related to Blackness and indigeneity, the question of why some Latinos choose to identify as white, and the political conservatism of certain Latino communities.”

Winner for Young Readers’ Literature: The Kirkus judges described the winner as "an illustrated journey through lesser-known and frequently erased parts of United States history."

Fiction: Critics adored this sly eco-thriller from the youngest author ever to win the Booker Prize (for 2013’s The Luminaries), with The Star Tribune praising “one of 2023's most sophisticated, stylish and searching literary works, a full-on triumph from a generational talent.”

Fiction: “You won't read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year,” promises The Guardian of this Booker Prize-nominated tragicomedy. It’s a hefty 600+ page tour de force from the author of Skippy Dies, about four members of an Irish family cracking under pressure.

Fiction: One of the year’s most anticipated books from the two-time National Book award-winning author and MacArthur Genius recipient, which follows an enslaved teenage girl narrating her journey through the American South before the Civil War. Preorder for an October 24 release.

Fiction: Fans of the Brothers Grimm and Black Mirror will adore this collection of seven classic fairy tales stylishly remixed by the MacArthur "Genius" fellow and Pulitzer finalist. “This is a truly well-wrought and magical work, rather than simple updates of fairy tales or fables, these stories have a chilling core and deep observations on modern life that we can all learn from,” mused The Brooklyn Rail.

Fiction: In this collection of short stories about love and loss in contemporary New York City, the National Book Award finalist “can make you laugh, cry, contemplate life’s deepest questions, remember what it was like to be a child, and feel the warmth, or chill, of your own family history,” according to The New York Times.

Nonfiction: A moving and carefully-researched account of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution by the Guardian’s former China correspondent, featuring rare first person accounts from people who lived through this brutal period in Chinese history.

Nonfiction: This definitive portrait of the legendary choreographer and father of American ballet was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. "Gorgeous . . . Balanchine may have been a genius on an Olympian scale, but in Mr. B he's relentlessly, alluringly human," exclaimed Oprah Daily.