The Award-Winning Novels of 2023
The Books That Took Home This Year’s Biggest Literary Prizes
Another year, another crop of newly-minted literary honorees.
From the Pulitzer to the Booker, the Nebula to the Edgar, here are the winners of the biggest book prizes of 2023.
Congratulations to all!
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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
Trust by Hernan Diaz
(Riverhead)
“[An] enthralling tour de force … Each story talks to the others, and the conversation is both combative and revelatory … As an American epic, Trust gives The Great Gatsby a run for its money … Diaz’s debut, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Trust fulfills that book’s promise, and then some … Wordplay is Trust’s currency … In Diaz’s accomplished hands we circle ever closer to the black hole at the core of Trust … Trust is a glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery … He spins a larger parable, then, plumbing sex and power, causation and complicity. Mostly, though, Trust is a literary page-turner, with a wealth of puns and elegant prose, fun as hell to read.”
–Hamilton Cain (Oprah Daily)
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper)
“I already know: My favorite novel of 2022 is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love … In a feat of literary alchemy, Kingsolver uses the fire of that boy’s spirit to illuminate—and singe—the darkest recesses of our country … Kingsolver has reconceived the story in the fabric of contemporary life. Demon Copperhead is entirely her own thrilling story, a fierce examination of contemporary poverty and drug addiction tucked away in the richest country on Earth … There’s the saving grace. This would be a grim melodrama if it weren’t for Demon’s endearing humor, an alloy formed by his unaffected innocence and weary cynicism … With Demon Copperhead, she’s raised the bar even higher, providing her best demonstration yet of a novel’s ability to simultaneously entertain and move and plead for reform.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
Finalists: Vauhini Vara, The Immortal King Rao (W. W. Norton & Company)
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Recognizes an outstanding work of literary fiction by a United States citizen.
Prize money: $10,000
Blackouts by Justin Torres
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Torres’s lyrical new novel, Blackouts, these two forms—erasure poetry and queer history—collide to create one epic conversation between a pivotal 20th-century queer sexology text and two unreliable queer Puerto Rican narrators … The supreme pleasure of the book is its slow obliteration of any firm idea of reality—a perfect metaphor for the delirious disorientation that comes with learning queer history as an adult … Torres haunts this book full of ghosts like a ghost himself, and with this novel, he has passed the haunting on, creating the next link in a queer chain from Jan to Juan to nene to you.”
–Hugh Ryan (The New York Times Book Review)
Finalists:
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars (Pantheon)
Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk (Simon & Schuster)
Paul Harding, This Other Eden (W. W. Norton & Company)
Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time (Henry Holt & Company)
BOOKER PRIZE
Awarded for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK.
Prize money: £50,000
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
“If there was ever a crucial book for our current times, it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song … The book is also reminiscent of Anna Burns’s Milkman in that it’s an important story aching to be told, heavy with the reality it bears. While Burns wrote of sexual harassment, Lynch’s dystopian Ireland reflects the reality of war-torn countries, where refugees take to the sea to escape persecution on land. Prophet Song echoes the violence in Palestine, Ukraine and Syria, and the experience of all those who flee from war-torn countries. This is a story of bloodshed and heartache that strikes at the core of the inhumanity of western politicians’ responses to the refugee crisis … Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.”
–Aimée Walsh (The Observer)
Finalists:
Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience (Knopf Canada)
Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You (MCD)
Paul Harding, This Other Eden (W. W. Norton & Company)
Chetna Maroo, Western Lane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, tr. from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
(Liveright)
“Mr. Gospodinov…is a nostalgia artist … His books are preoccupied with memory, its ambiguous pleasures and its wistful, melancholy attraction. He is most drawn to minor and personalized details … The book flows between the remembered and the purely imagined as easily as it wanders through time … The novel rambles among elaborations of its fantastical conceit, flashbacks to the narrator’s youth, and meditations on the current condition of Europe with no apparent cohesive structure. Caveat lector: This makes for an extremely diffuse and piecemeal book. But the absence of a stabilizing center of gravity is symptomatic of a continent still recovering from the hammer-blows of World War II and the Cold War … Mr. Gospodinov also grasps the dangers of escapism … This difficult but rewarding novel concludes with an image of Europe brought to the brink of renewed conflict—an abstraction that recent events have imbued with the terrible force of reality.”
–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)
Finalists:
Boulder by Eva Baltasar, tr. from Spanish by Julia Sanches (And Other Stories)
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, tr. from Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Archipelago)
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, tr. from French by (World Editions)
Standing Heavy by GauZ’, tr. from French by Frank Wynne (Biblioasis)
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, tr. from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey (Bloomsbury)
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.”
Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“The strangeness of living in a body is exposed, the absurdity of carrying race and gender on one’s face, all against the backdrop of an America in ruin … Ma’s meticulously-crafted mood and characterization … Ma’s gift for endings is evident … Ma masterfully captures her characters’ double consciousness, always seeing themselves through the white gaze, in stunning and bold new ways … Even the weaker stories in the book…are redeemed by Ma’s restrained prose style, dry humor, and clever gut-punch endings. But all this technical prowess doesn’t mean the collection lacks a heart. First- and second-generation Americans who might have been invisible for most of their lives are seen and held lovingly in Ma’s fiction.”
–Bruna Dantas Lobato (Astra)
Finalists:
Percival Everett, Dr No (Graywolf)
Jon Fosse with Damion Searls (trans.), A New Name (Transit Books)
Mieko Kawakami with Sam Bett and David Boyd (trans.), All the Lovers in the Night (Europa Editions)
Namwali Serpell, The Furrows (Hogarth)
KIRKUS PRIZE
Chosen from books reviewed by Kirkus Reviews that earned the Kirkus Star.
Prize money: $50,000
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
(Riverhead)
“If you think this novel is beginning to sound too nice, too pat, you don’t know McBride’s writing. He crowds the chaos of the world into his sentences … McBride’s roving narrator is, by turns, astute, withering, giddy, damning and jubilant. He has a fine appreciation for the human comedy … McBride looks squarely at savage truths about race and prejudice, but he also insists on humor and hope. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels I’ve read this year. It pulls off the singular magic trick of being simultaneously flattening and uplifting.”
–Maureen Corrigan (NPR)
Finalists:
Jamel Brinkley, Witness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Elanor Catton, Birnam Wood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog (Random House)
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend (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 United Kingdom.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper)
Finalists:
Jacqueline Crooks, Fire Rush (Viking)
Louise Kennedy, Trespasses (Riverhead)
Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies (Knopf)
Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait (Knopf)
Laline Paull, Pod (Pegasus)
PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
Awarded to the author of the year’s best work of fiction by a living American citizen.
Prize money: $15,000
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Eerie and intimate … Though the literary ruse drives its plot, The Book of Goose is mainly concerned with the lack of personal agency afforded to two very different girls—and how this shapes their destinies. Both want more than their village can offer, but until they write their book, only Fabienne has some power in her dealings with adults—because she scares them. When their book’s success gives Agnès a measure of control over her future, the friendship takes a stark turn. Not since John Knowles’ A Separate Peace has a novel wrung such drama from two teens standing face to face on a tree branch … In prose shorn of unnecessary modifiers and frills of any kind, Li capably depicts the way a strong-willed sadist can browbeat a peer into subservience.”
–Kevin Canfield (The Star Tribune)
Finalists:
Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You (MCD)
Laura Warrell, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon)
Dione Irving, The Islands (Catapult)
Kathryn Harlan, Fruiting Bodies (W. W. Norton & Company)
PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT FICTION
Awarded to an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.
Prize money: $25,000
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty
(Tin House Books)
“Talty depicts the relationship between David and Paige perfectly—the siblings clearly care for each other; it’s evident beneath the bickering and the long periods when they don’t see each other … The story ends with both mother and son experiencing terrifying medical emergencies; it’s almost excruciating to read, but it’s undeniably powerful, and, in its own way, beautiful … Talty’s prose is flawless throughout; he writes with a straightforward leanness that will likely appeal to admirers of Thom Jones or Denis Johnson. But his style is all his own, as is his immense sense of compassion. Night of the Living Rez is a stunning look at a family navigating their lives through crisis—it’s a shockingly strong debut, sure, but it’s also a masterwork by a major talent.”
–Michael Schaub (The Star Tribune)
Finalists:
Sindya Bhanoo, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere (Catapult)
Meron Hadero, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times (Restless Books)
Morgan Thomas, Manywhere (Picador)
Jasmine Sawers, The Anchored World (Rose Metal Press)
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)
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
(Knopf)
“Brief quotes give the text the veneer of nonfiction, and keep the narrative at arm’s length, rather than pull you close as fiction often attempts to … We leave the pool in the novel’s second half, and are firmly anchored aboveground with Alice, diagnosed with dementia, and her unnamed daughter … Otsuka’s prose is powerfully subdued: She builds lists and litanies that appear unassuming, even quotidian, until the paragraph comes to an end, and you find yourself stunned by what she has managed … It’s in [the] dissonance that the novel’s halves begin to meaningfully cohere … The puzzling narrative structure makes a kind of poetic sense as myth … The Swimmers makes an archetypal story wholly personal … In a time of monotony and chaos, when death is as concrete as it is unimaginable, and when cracks can and do appear in the pool for no discernible reason, The Swimmers is an exquisite companion. Though it doesn’t answer the unanswerable, the novel’s quiet insistence resonates: that it is our perfectly ordinary proclivities that make us who we are.”
–Rachel Khong (The New York Times Book Review)
Finalists:
David Santos Donaldson, Greenland (Amistad Press)
Morgan Talty, Night of the Living Rez (Tin House Books)
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
Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, trans. by Jo Heinrich
(Peirene Press)
“Every now and again, you come across a book you instantly know you must read and will devour … Oskamp tells their stories with a refreshing compassion—no poking fun at the former GDR as with Thomas Brussig and co., nor the anger and outrage of Jana Hensel. Oskamp is a curious observer and gleans intimate insights into the lives of the many who carried on as best they could when things got tough. Chapter by chapter, we are invited into their private sphere and bear witness not only to their tragedies, illnesses, and bereavements but also to their triumphs and their great fortitude. Marzahn, mon amour captures a piece of modern German history and brings it right down to the human level.”
–Catherine Venner (World Literature Today)
Finalists:
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner)
Kim Thúy (translated from French by Sheila Fischman), Em (Blackstone)
Ivana Sajko (translated from Croatian by Mima Simic), Love Novel (Biblioasis)
Fernanda Melchor (translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes), Paradais (New Directions)
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf)
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
We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White
(Astra House)
“A gorgeous novel about loss, survival and community … The structure of We Are a Haunting is inventive; the switching of viewpoints makes it feel like an extended conversation between Colly and Key … White’s characters are masterfully drawn, and his use of language is brilliant … This is a stunningly original and beautiful novel of devotion, a book that gives and gives as it asks us what it means to be part of a family, of a community.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
Finalists:
Elizabeth Acevedo, Family Lore (HarperCollins / Ecco)
Christine Byl, Lookout (Deep Vellum / A Strange Object)
Eskor David Johnson, Pay As You Go (McSweeney’s)
Jamila Minnicks, Moonrise Over New Jessup (Hachette / Algonquin Books)
Tracey Rose Peyton, Night Wherever We Go (HarperCollins / Ecco)
Esther Yi, Y/N (Astra House)
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)
The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad
(Riverhead)
“With each character’s journey, author Ahmad explores the multifaceted nature of longing and loss and what the loneliness they engender is all for. This novel has everything a reader could ask for: a sizzling, noirlike plot; political intrigue juxtaposed with a rich intergenerational family saga; capacious, conflicted characters, including women who may be marginalized by society but are masters of their own narratives; and sublime sentences. A debut novelist, Ahmad manages this complexity seamlessly … A feat of storytelling not to be missed.”
Finalists:
Maayan Eitan, Love (Penguin)
Sidik Forfana, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner)
Oscar Hokeah, Calling for a Blanket Dance (Algonquin)
Morgan Thomas, Manywhere (Picador)
(FICTION)
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, tr. Sean Cotter
(Deep Vellum)
“…a novel made from other novels, a meticulously borrowed piece of hyperliterature. Kleist’s cosmic ambiguity, the bureaucratic terror of Kafka, the enchantments of García Márquez and Bruno Schulz’s labyrinths are all recognizable in Cărtărescu’s anecdotes, dreams and journal entries. That fictive texture is part and parcel of the novel’s sense of unreality, which not only blends the pedestrian and the bizarre, but also commingles many features of the literary avant-garde. Although the narrator himself is largely critical of literature … he also affirms the possibility inherent in the ‘bitter and incomprehensible books’ he idolizes. In this way, he plays both critic and apologist throughout, a delicious dialectic whose final, ravishing synthesis exists in the towering work of Solenoid itself.”
–Dustin Illingsworth (The New York Times Book Review)
Finalists:
Anna Dorn, Exalted (Unnamed Press)
James Hannaham, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta (Little, Brown and Company)
Jamil Jan Kochai, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories (Viking)
Fernanda Melchor (translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes), Paradais (New Directions)
EDGAR AWARD
Presented by the Mystery Writers of America, honoring the best in crime and mystery fiction.
(BEST NOVEL)
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
(William Morrow and Company)
“… poetic and mesmerizing … It’s an impossible weight for a mother to imagine, but Kukafka handles it with grace and empathy and terrible, enduring beauty … a victim-forward narrative that is a relief to read after years of serial killer hagiography. It’s also no less thrilling … a career-defining novel—powerful, important, intensely human, and filled with a unique examination of tragedy, one where the reader is left with a curious emotion: hope.”
–Tod Goldberg (USA Today)
Finalists:
John Darnielle, Devil House (MCD)
Gabino Iglesias, The Devil Takes You Home (Mulholland Books)
Nita Prose, The Maid (Ballantine)
Kellye Garrett, Like a Sister (Mulholland Books)
Chuck Hogan, Gangland (Grand Central Publishing)
(BEST FIRST NOVEL)
Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor
(Soho Crime)
“Don’t Know Tough takes the adage of ‘Faith, Family, and Football’ and reveals it to be a vicious canard, or at least a decent cover for the common failings of god and men, the violence on the field an acceptable proxy for the violence that exists behind closed doors. A major work from a bright, young talent.”
–Tod Goldberg (USA Today)
Finalists:
Erin E. Adams, Jackal (Bantam)
Ramona Emerson, Shutter (Soho Crime)
Katie Gutierrez, More Than You’ll Ever Know (William Morrow & Company)
Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief (Tiny Reparations Books)
NEBULA AWARD
Given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for the best science fiction or fantasy novel.
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang
(Harper Voyager)
“Babel has earned tremendous praise and deserves all of it. It’s Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass by way of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season: inventive and engaging, passionate and precise. Kuang is fiercely disciplined even when she’s playful and experimental: In an author’s note, she invites readers to ‘remind yourself this is a work of fiction’ before proceeding to footnote the text with the vicious hindsight of a historian. Like the silver bars at its heart—like empires and academic institutions both—Babel derives its power from sustaining a contradiction, from trying to hold in your head both love and hatred for the charming thing that sustains itself by devouring you.”
–Amal El-Mohtar (The New York Times Book Review)
Finalists:
Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes (Tor Books)
Nicola Griffith, Spear (Tordotcom)
T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone (Tor Books)
Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth (Tordotcom)
Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (MCD)
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.
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
(Tor Books)
“… clever and bold-hearted … Marra’s hard-fought journey from third-string princess to hero will delight fantasy readers. Kingfisher’s signature offbeat humor remains as entertaining as ever, and her treatment of domestic abuse is filled with compassion and dignity. This rollicking feminist fairy tale is filled with redemption, community and courage, its dark passages the road to a satisfyingly uplifting endgame.”
–Jaclyn Fulwood (Shelf Awareness)
Finalists:
John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society (Tor Books)
Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes (Tor Books)
Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth (Tordotcom)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Del Rey Books)
Mary Robinette Kowal, The Spare Man (Tor Books)
BRAM STOKER AWARD
Presented by the Horror Writers Association for “superior achievement” in horror writing for novels.
The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias
(Mulholland Books)
“… riveting … a barrio noir that invites readers to consider the depths of darkness in this world, its material effects, and the cycles of violence we both willingly and perforce enter into … written in both English and Spanish—the former outweighs the latter, and any Spanish dialogue too important to the plot or mood is translated—and takes readers on a journey to hell and back. Whether hell is the American racism, the Mexican cartel industry, Mario’s grief and increasing comfort with violence, or all of the above, it works … The mix of religious, superstitious, and supernatural elements add a dimension to the novel that heightens its horror, but also its social commentary … may not be a cheerful book, but it still allows glimpses of love, moments of connection, and glimmers of beauty to exist. Even if those can’t save us, they point toward what, with some effort and luck, just might.”
–Ilana Masad (NPR)
Finalists:
Alma Katsu, The Fervor (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
Gwendolyn Kiste, Reluctant Immortals (Gallery / Saga Press)
Josh Malerman, Daphne (Del Rey Books)
Catriona Ward, Sundial (Tor Nightfire)
