Here Are All the Award-Winning Novels of 2025!

Percival Everett won the Pulitzer and Rabih Alameddine took home the National Book Award, but who else added a shiny new trophy to their mantle this year?

From the Booker to the Giller, the Kirkus to the Edgar, here are the winners of the biggest fiction prizes of 2025.

Congratulations to all!

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

Awarded for distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.
Prize money: $15,000

James by Percival Everett
(Random House)

“The result is strangely new and familiar—an adrenaline-spiking adventure with absurdity and tragedy blended together … Re-imaginings of classic literature are challenging, often unnecessary endeavors. This one is different, a startling homage and a new classic in its own right … Again and again. In true Everett fashion, the intertwined artifice of race and language is stretched to self-reflexive absurdity … Like James and Norman’s encounter, the novel is exquisitely multilayered. A brilliant, sometimes shocking mashup of various literary forms, James has the arc of an odyssey, with the quest for home, and an abundance of absurdly comical humor.”

–Carole V. Bell (NPR)

Finalists:

Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot (Viking)
Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman (Beacon Press)
Stacey Levine, Mice 1961 (Verse Chorus Press)

 

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Recognizes an outstanding work of literary fiction published in the United States.
Prize money: $10,000

The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine
(Grove Press)

“Elliptical and elastic … Alameddine is playing the long game in The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, trusting that we’ll stay with him, that the skill and urgency of his storytelling will keep us rooted, let him pursue his own pace. This, too, is the way of life, a series of moments followed by other moments, the connections only apparent through the passage of time. Where else does such a passage take place if not within us, where we are always every age we have ever been at once? It’s a tightrope walk, a magic trick, which is also what a novel is. A tale with many tails and heads that is, in this case, magnificently articulated through the instrument of Raja’s voice”

–David L. Ulin (Alta)

Finalists:

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf)
Karen Russell, The Antidote (Knopf)
Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther (A Strange Object / Deep Vellum Publishing)
Bryan Washington, Palaver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

 

BOOKER PRIZE

Awarded for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK.
Prize money: £50,000

Flesh by David Szalay
(Scribner)

“Mr. Szalay instills his characters with almost no inner life. The descriptions of each scene are ruthlessly pared back and the dialogue is almost comically minimalist … These reductions can feel exaggerated—Mr. Szalay pushes his flat, desiccated writing style to some eye-rolling extremes—but the effect is hypnotic … Taboo for so long, the female body has become a subject of celebratory interest in contemporary novels; meanwhile, explorations into the male sex drive have been tacitly proscribed. Mr. Szalay turns a cold gaze on those urges and makes no promises that we’ll be comfortable with what he sees.”

–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)

Finalists:

Susan Choi, Flashlight (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth)
Katie Kitamura, Audition (Riverhead)
Ben Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives (S&S/Summit)
Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter (Europa Editions)

 

INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

Awarded for a single book in English translation published in the UK.
Prize money: £50,000, divided equally between the author and the translator

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
(And Other Stories)

“Searing, phantasmagorical, unclassifiable … What Bhasthi identifies as ‘a rich and vibrant tradition of oral storytelling’ shines forth. Here are wicked in-laws, bedazzled officials, revered mother figures. Feuds fester until families are left rancid. The gossip is radioactive.”

–Kate McLoughlin (Times Literary Supplement)

Finalists:

On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
Small Boat, by Vincent Delecroix, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson
Under the Eye of the Big Bird, by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda
Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes

 

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

Given annually to honor outstanding writing and to foster a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. Judged by the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely “professional book review editors and book reviewers.”

My Friends by Hisham Matar
(Random House)

“Meditative … It’s gratifying to see this thoughtful writer take all the time he needs to wrestle until daybreak with the mysterious angel of his disquieted conscience … Matar writes with cool solemnity in phrases that are often epigraphic but never contrived … Sorrowful as this novel often is, it’s not a Shakespearean tragedy nor an elegy.”

–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)

Finalists:

Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday)
Nora Lange, Us Fools (Two Dollar Radio)
Joseph O’Neill, Godwin (Pantheon)

 

KIRKUS PRIZE

Chosen from books reviewed by Kirkus Reviews that earned the Kirkus Star.
Prize money: $50,000

The Slip by Lucas Schaefer
(Simon & Schuster)

“Stylistic brio, vivid sociological detail and general air of chutzpah. Trying to summarize it in an 800-word review is like trying to paint a mural on a postage stamp. Suffice it to say, you’re unlikely to read a more impressive first novel this year … As the novel progresses, it can’t help wobbling under the weight of all it bears. The simultaneous crises of identity feel a bit schematic. And Schaefer is able to bring together his many plotlines only with a heavy application of coincidence. But perhaps plausibility is too stingy a standard for a novel this generous with its wonders … Wildly ambitious and immensely rewarding.”

–Anthony Marra (The New York Times Book Review)

Finalists:

Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth)
Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness (Mariner)
Allegra Goodman, Isola (Dial Press)
Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf)
David Szalay, Flesh (Scribner)

 

WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the UK.
Prize Money: £30,000

The Safekeeping by Yael Van Der Wouden
(Avid Reader Press)

“What a quietly remarkable book … Nothing in this book is gratuitous. Van der Wouden’s writing is fine and taut. She lasers in on details, and presents unsentimental and intrinsically powerful metaphors … The story is resolved in such a bold and tender way that it becomes not merely clever, but indelible.”

–Lori Soderlind (The New York Times Book Review)

Finalists:

Aria Aber, Good Girl (Hogarth)
Miranda July, All Fours (Riverhead)
Sanam Mahloudji, The Persians (Scribner)
Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything (Random House)
Nussaibah Younis, Fundamentally (Tiny Reparations Books)

 

PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

Awarded to the author of the year’s best work of fiction by a living American citizen.
Prize money: $15,000

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

“Each blood draw, each medical detail, is presented with documentary precision, lifted, one assumes, from life … The narrator becomes conversant in a new language—the language of the medical system—and a new vocabulary of touch … There is something almost showy about the formal challenge of this novel … From a tale of great pain—a rare kind of story—it becomes one so difficult to render that it is thought to be impossible: a story of ordinary love, ordinary happiness … Small Rain feels like a culmination, which comes with its own feeling of melancholy for the reader.”

–Parul Sehgal (The New Yorker)

Finalists:

‘Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots (W. W. Norton & Company)
Susan Muaddi Darraj, Behind You Is the Sea (HarperVia)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday)
Danzy Senna, Colored Television (Riverhead)

 

ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

Awards established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year. Administered by the American Library Association.

Prize money: $5,000 (winner), $1,500 (finalists)

James by Percival Everett
(Random House)

“Because this is a Percival Everett novel, we are not surprised that he tears down and rebuilds a cultural landmark … Because this is a Percival Everett novel, too, it luxuriates in language. Everett, like Twain, is a master of American argot; he is the code switcher’s code switcher. In James, he puts his skills to incandescent use … What sets James above Everett’s previous novels, as casually and caustically funny as many are, is that here the humanity is turned up — way up. This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful. Beneath the wordplay, and below the packed dirt floor of Everett’s moral sensibility, James is an intensely imagined human being … My ideal of hell would be to live with a library that contained only reimaginings of famous novels. It’s a wet-brained and dutiful genre, by and large…James is the rarest of exceptions. It should come bundled with Twain’s novel. It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love … Everett shoots what is certain to be this book’s legion of readers straight through the heart.”

–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)

Finalists:

Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! (Knopf)
Jiaming Tang, Cinema Love (Dutton)

 

INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

An international literary award presented each year for a novel written in English or translated into English.
Prize money: €100,000

The Adversary by Michael Crummey
(Doubleday)

“Detailed and haunting … A beautifully written, immensely powerful and subtly ingenious novel. Its greatest—which is to say, most monstrous—revelations are so discreetly offered that you could miss them; but when you realize them, they practically take your breath away. They did mine. And when I turned the last page, I just sat there, utterly stunned by this novel’s terrible force.”

–Katherine A. Powers (The Washington Post)

Finalists:

Percival Everett, James (Random House)
Daniel Mason, North Woods (Random House)
Selva Almada, Not a River (Graywolf)
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song (Grove)
Gerda Blees, We Are Light (World Editions)

 

CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

An annual award presented by The Center for Fiction, a non-profit organization in New York City, for the best debut novel.
Prize money: $10,000

Natch by Darrell Kinsey
(University of Iowa Press)

“Kinsey’s taut novel tells a straightforward story, but it’s the voice that stands out most … A melancholy story of love and loss with a memorable narrator.”

—Kirkus

Finalists:

Colwill Brown, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh (Henry Holt)
Rickey Fayne, The Devil Three Times (Little Brown and Company)
Justin Haynes, Ibis (Harry N. Abrams)
Alejandro Heredia, Loca (Simon & Schuster)
Mariam Rahmani, Liquid (Algonquin)
Shubha Sunder, Optional Practical Training (Graywolf)

 

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE

Recognizes outstanding literary works as well as champions new writers.
Prize money: $1,000

(ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION)

Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang
(Dutton)

“There is much to admire in this intricately plotted novel. The depiction of Chinese immigrant life in America is very well done: rich in detail, and with lovely flashes of humour . . . And it’s a story with real heart: Tang shows genuine sympathy for each of his flawed characters as he carefully unpicks the moral complexities of their choices.”

—Claire Adam (The Guardian)

Finalists:

Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots (W. W. Norton & Company)
Joseph Earl Thomas, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (Grand Central)
Jessica Elisheva Emerson, Olive Days (Counterpoint)
Julian Zabalbeascoa, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here (Two Dollar Radio)

(FICTION)

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet
(Simon & Schuster)

“The miracle is not that Say Hello to My Little Friend works, so much as that it enlarges our sense of the possible, recalling the vanity of human aspiration not through a lens of ridicule but through one of empathy. The chorus of voices, the point-of-view shifts—all of it allows Crucet to imagine her way to a larger authenticity … Crucet insists that we rethink our models for engagement, with one another and with the world at large.”

—David L. Ulin (The Atlantic)

Finalists:

Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot (Viking)
Percival Everett, James (Doubleday)
Miranda July, All Fours (Riverhead)
Yuri Herrera, Season of the Swamp (Graywolf)

 

EDGAR AWARD

Presented by the Mystery Writers of America, honoring the best in crime and mystery fiction.

The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell
(Vintage)

“[A] smart, provocative novel … Vassell perfectly constructs a classic crime procedural against a backdrop of racism, sexism, and classism. Beauchamp is a winning character readers will adore … Readers don’t need to have read The Other Half to enjoy this intriguing novel, but reading both is as satisfying as pairing a cup of Earl Grey and a lavender biscuit. In the final pages, Vassell lays the groundwork for a third installment that promises to be as enjoyable as the ones that preceded it. A stellar sophomore outing for an intriguing detective.”

—Kirkus

Finalists:

Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup (Del Rey)
Katrina Carrasco, Rough Trade (Picador)
Sarah Easter Collins, Things Don’t Break on Their Own (Crown)
Nicolás Ferraro, My Favorite Scar (Soho Crime)
Liz Moore, The God of the Woods (Riverhead)
Amy Tintera, Listen for the Lie (Celadon)

 

NEBULA AWARD

Given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for the best science fiction or fantasy novel.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
(DAW)

“This is a fast-paced and gloriously weird novel, full of explosive shenanigans and touching sentiment. It also manages to be an exploration of the queerness and the surprising fragility of monstrous bodies, as well as their resilience … a remarkably accomplished debut.”

—Liz Bourke (Locus Magazine)

Finalists:

Kerstin Hall, Asunder (Tordotcom)
Kelly Link, The Book of Love (Random House/Ad Astra Press)
Vajra Chandrasekera, Rakesfall (Tordotcom)
Yaroslav Barsukov, Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory (Caezik SF & Fantasy)
T. Kingfisher, A Sorceress Comes to Call (Tor Books)

 

HUGO AWARD

Awarded for the best science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more published in English or translated in the prior calendar year.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
(Del Rey)

“Bennett’s newest, The Tainted Cup, absolutely rewards that attention: cleverly drawn characters and plots, a fascinating world with fantastic mechanics, and it manages to wrap up its narrative satisfyingly while leaving the door open for more.”

—Jake Casella (Locus Magazine)

Finalists:

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay (Orbit Books/Tor UK)
Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time (Avid Reader Press/Sceptre)
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model (Tordotcom)
John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In (DAW Books)
T. Kingfisher, A Sorceress Comes to Call (Tor Books)

 

BRAM STOKER AWARD

Presented by the Horror Writers Association for “superior achievement” in horror writing for novels.

The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
(S&S/Saga Press)

“…there comes a time when the label ‘rising star’ no longer applies, when an author achieves something that simply makes them a mainstay of the genre, a must-read storyteller whose imagination has developed into something towering. With The Haunting of Velkwood, Kiste has surely hit that mark, delivering a chilling character drama wrapped up in a high-concept horror narrative so ingenious that you might be jealous you never thought of it.”

—Matthew Jackson (Paste)

Finalists:

Gabino Iglesias, House of Bone and Rain (Mulholland Books)
Stephen Graham Jones, I Was a Teenage Slasher (S&S/Saga Press)
Josh Malerman, Incidents Around the House (Del Rey)
Paul G. Tremblay, Horror Movie (William Morrow)

 

JOYCE CAROL OATES LITERARY PRIZE

An annual award presented by the New Literary Project to recognize mid-career writers of fiction.
Prize Money: $50,000

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet
(Simon & Schuster)

“There is something quixotic in watching Izzy spin himself and those around him into remakes of culture, but this, too, is true about the immigrant experience, which Capó Crucet details with breathtaking precision … [Capó Crucet] also has a rare knack for metanarrative, a skill that allows readers to think about Izzy’s story as a story without ruining its intimacy.”

—Eric A. Ponce (BookPage)

The Horse by Willy Vlautin
(Harper)

“Vlautin’s gift for capturing the unique terror of the moment when heavy drinking turns to helplessness is rendered with heartbreaking acuity. Set against the desolate majesty of the high desert, Vlautin’s depiction of one broken soul trying to save another is aspirational, allegorical and, ultimately, transcendent.”

—Jim Ruland (The Los Angeles Times)

Finalists:

Sarah Manguso, Liars (Hogarth)
Julia Phillips, Bear (Hogarth)
Morgan Talty, Fire Exit (Tin House Books)

 

GILLER PRIZE

Given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English (including translation) the previous year.
Prize Money: $100,000 (winner), $10,000 (finalists)

Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa
(Little Brown and Company)

“A feat of economy, unspooling Ning’s emotional journey amid the cage of her salon … Punches above its weight. Thammavongsa’s minimalism conveys a range of tones and psychological nuances as she grapples with the stubborn prejudices of class … Wily and caustic, the book condemns petty Western narcissisms yet allows for bursts of radiance.”

—Hamilton Cain (The Washington Post)

Finalists:

Mona Awad, We Love You, Bunny (Marysue Rucci Books)
Eddy Boudel Tan, The Tiger and the Cosmonaut (Viking)
Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express (Summit)
Emma Knight, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus (Pamela Dorman Books)