26 Pullitzer Prize-Winning Fiction Novels You Should Read

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon · 2012

Empire Falls

Richard Russo · 2002

<b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER <b>• </b>PULITZER PRIZE WINNER <b>• The bestselling author of <i>Nobody's Fool </i>and <i>Straight Man</i> delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace. </b></b><br><br><b>“Rich, humorous ... Mr. Russo’s most seductive book thus far.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b><br><br>Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves with the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends and neighbors and who find humor and hope in the most unlikely places, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo.<br><br> Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself.<br><br><b>Look for Richard Russo's new book, <i>Somebody's Fool</i>, coming soon.</b>

Middlesex: A Novel

Jeffrey Eugenides · 2002

The Known World

Edward P. Jones · 2009

<p>From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.</p><p>The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. </p><p>Edward P. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.</p><p>“A masterpiece that deserves a place in the American literary canon.”—Time</p>

Gilead: A Novel

Marilynne Robinson · 2004

March: A Novel

Geraldine Brooks · 2006

The Road

Cormac McCarthy · 2006

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Junot Díaz · 2008

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Elizabeth Strout · 2008

Tinkers

Paul Harding · 2010

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan · 2011

The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson · 2012

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times bestselling novel of North Korea: an epic journey into the heart of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship. “Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which [Adam] Johnson is painting here.”—The Washington Post Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.” Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE Named ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by more than a dozen publications, including The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Wall Street Journal • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle Praise for The Orphan Master’s Son “An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”—Pulitzer Prize citation “Mr. Johnson has written a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Rich with a sense of discovery . . . The Orphan Master’s Son has an early lead on novel of [the year].”—The Daily Beast “This is a novel worth getting excited about.”—The Washington Post “[A] ripping piece of fiction that is also an astute commentary on the nature of freedom, sacrifice, and glory.”—Elle

The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Donna Tartt · 2015

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

Anthony Doerr · 2017

<b>*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy <i>(Stranger Things)</i> starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*</b><br> <br><b>Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant <i>New York Times</i> bestseller and <i>New York Times Book Review </i>Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.</b><br><br>Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.<br> <br>In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.<br> <br>Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, <i>All the Light We Cannot See</i> is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (<i>Los Angeles Times</i>).

The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen · 2017

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016<br/>A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.<br/>It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.<br/>The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

The Underground Railroad: A Novel

Colson Whitehead · 2016

Less (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Novel (The Arthur Less Books, 1)

Andrew Sean Greer · 2017

<b><b>A struggling novelist travels the world to avoid an awkward wedding in this hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel full of "arresting lyricism and beauty" (The <i>New York Times Book Review).</i></b></b><b><b><i></i></b></b></br></br>WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE<br>National Bestseller<br>A<i> New York Times</i> Notable Book of 2017<br><b>A <i>Washington Post </i>Top Ten Book of 2017<br></b><b>A <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> Top Ten Book of 2017<br></b><b><b><b><b>Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Lambda Award, and the California Book Award</b></b></b></b></br></br><b><i></i></b><i></i></br></br>Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.</br></br><b>QUESTION</b>: How do you arrange to skip town?</br></br><b>ANSWER</b>: You accept them all.</br></br><i>What would possibly go wrong? </i>Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.</br></br>Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, <i>Less</i> is, above all, a love story.</br></br>A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author <i>The New York Times</i> has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," <i>Less </i>shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.<i></i></br></br><b>"I could not love LESS more."--Ron Charles, The </b><i><b>Washington Post</b></i></br></br><b>"Andrew Sean Greer's<i> Less</i> is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful."-<i>-</i>Christopher Buckley<i>, The New York Times Book Review</i></b></br></br>

The Overstory: A Novel

Richard Powers · 2019

The Nickel Boys: A Novel

Colson Whitehead · 2020

The Night Watchman

Louise Erdrich · 2020

<p><strong>WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION</strong></p><p><strong>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER</strong></p><p><strong>WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR</strong></p><p><strong>Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich&#8217;s&#160;grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.</strong></p><p>Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new &#8220;emancipation&#8221; bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn&#8217;t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a &#8220;termination&#8221; that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans &#8220;for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run&#8221;?</p><p>Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice&#8217;s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn&#8217;t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.</p><p>Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice&#8217;s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.</p><p>In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.</p>

The Netanyahus

Joshua Cohen · 2021

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021 A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021 "Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever." —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Hernan Diaz · 2023

Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver · 2022

Night Watch (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A novel

Jayne Anne Phillips · 2025

<b>PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A <i>NEW YORKER </i>BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds</b><br><br>In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.<br><br>The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.<br><br>Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, <i>Night Watch </i>is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

James: A Novel

Percival Everett · 2024