Fiction
For a list of winners and finalists, see National Book Award for Fiction.General fiction for adult readers is a National Book Award category continuous from 1950, with multiple awards for a few years beginning 1980. From 1935 to 1941 there were six annual awards for novels or general fiction and the "Bookseller Discovery", the "Most Original Book", or both was sometimes a novel.
| 1950 | Nelson Algren | The Man with the Golden Arm |
| 1951 | William Faulkner | The Collected Stories of William Faulkner |
| 1952 | James Jones | From Here to Eternity |
| 1953 | Ralph Ellison | Invisible Man |
| 1954 | Saul Bellow | The Adventures of Augie March |
| 1955 | William Faulkner | A Fable |
| 1956 | John O'Hara | Ten North Frederick |
| 1957 | Wright Morris | The Field of Vision |
| 1958 | John Cheever | The Wapshot Chronicle |
| 1959 | Bernard Malamud | The Magic Barrel |
| 1960 | Philip Roth | Goodbye, Columbus |
| 1961 | Conrad Richter | The Waters of Kronos |
| 1962 | Walker Percy | The Moviegoer |
| 1963 | J. F. Powers | Morte d'Urban |
| 1964 | John Updike | The Centaur |
| 1965 | Saul Bellow | Herzog |
| 1966 | Katherine Anne Porter | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | Bernard Malamud | The Fixer |
| 1968 | Thornton Wilder | The Eighth Day |
| 1969 | Jerzy Kosinski | Steps |
| 1970 | Joyce Carol Oates | them |
| 1971 | Saul Bellow | Mr. Sammler's Planet |
| 1972 | Flannery O'Connor | The Complete Stories |
| 1973 | John Barth | Chimera |
| John Edward Williams | Augustus | |
| 1974 | Thomas Pynchon | Gravity's Rainbow |
| Isaac Bashevis Singer | A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories | |
| 1975 | Robert Stone | Dog Soldiers |
| Thomas Williams | The Hair of Harold Roux | |
| 1976 | William Gaddis | J R |
| 1977 | Wallace Stegner | The Spectator Bird |
| 1978 | Mary Lee Settle | Blood Tie |
| 1979 | Tim O'Brien | Going After Cacciato |
| 1980 hard | William Styron | Sophie's Choice |
| 1980 pb | John Irving | The World According to Garp |
| 1981 hard | Wright Morris | Plains Song: For Female Voices |
| 1981 pb | John Cheever | The Stories of John Cheever |
| 1982 hard | John Updike | Rabbit is Rich |
| 1982 pb | William Maxwell | So Long, See You Tomorrow |
| 1983 hard | Alice Walker | The Color Purple |
| 1983 pb | Eudora Welty | The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty |
| 1984 | Ellen Gilchrist | Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories |
| 1985 | Don DeLillo | White Noise |
| 1986 | E.L. Doctorow | World's Fair |
| 1987 | Larry Heinemann | Paco's Story |
| 1988 | Pete Dexter | Paris Trout |
| 1989 | John Casey | Spartina |
| 1990 | Charles Johnson | Middle Passage |
| 1991 | Norman Rush | Mating |
| 1992 | Cormac McCarthy | All the Pretty Horses |
| 1993 | E. Annie Proulx | The Shipping News |
| 1994 | William Gaddis | A Frolic of His Own |
| 1995 | Philip Roth | Sabbath's Theater |
| 1996 | Andrea Barrett | Ship Fever and Other Stories |
| 1997 | Charles Frazier | Cold Mountain |
| 1998 | Alice McDermott | Charming Billy |
| 1999 | Ha Jin | Waiting |
| 2000 | Susan Sontag | In America |
| 2001 | Jonathan Franzen | The Corrections |
| 2002 | Julia Glass | Three Junes |
| 2003 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire |
| 2004 | Lily Tuck | The News from Paraguay |
| 2005 | William T. Vollmann | Europe Central |
| 2006 | Richard Powers | The Echo Maker |
| 2007 | Denis Johnson | Tree of Smoke |
| 2008 | Peter Matthiessen | Shadow Country |
| 2009 | Colum McCann | Let the Great World Spin |
| 2010 | Jaimy Gordon | Lord of Misrule |
| 2011 | Jesmyn Ward | Salvage the Bones |
| 2012 | Louise Erdrich | The Round House |
Read more about this topic: List Of Winners Of The National Book Award, Current Award Categories
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)