Book Archive
Pulitzer Prize
Winners & Finalists.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and General Nonfiction from 2010-2025.
32
Winners
66
Finalists
2
Categories
16
Years
2025
2 winners · 7 entriesJames
A reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, exploring the absurdity of racial supremacy and the search for family and freedom.
Headshot
A novel following eight teenage girls competing in a boxing tournament in Reno, Nevada, exploring violence, ambition, and female power.
Mice 1961
An experimental novel set in a small Washington State town where peculiar events unfold among ordinary residents.
The Unicorn Woman
A novel exploring race, identity, and mythology through the story of a Black woman in America.
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
A chronicle of how an improbable band of Soviet dissidents demanded the Kremlin obey its own laws, ultimately undermining the Soviet system.
I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India
An investigation into the assassination of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh and the rise of Hindu nationalism.
Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala
A deeply researched account of Guatemala's adoption industry and the families torn apart by coercive practices.
2024
2 winners · 6 entriesNight Watch
A haunting Civil War-era story centered on a mother and daughter grappling with trauma and survival in a West Virginia asylum.
Same Bed Different Dreams
A genre-bending novel interweaving Korean history, a secret society, and a Silicon Valley tech company.
Wednesday's Child
A novel exploring grief, motherhood, and the complexities of Chinese-American identity.
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
A devastating account of a school bus accident that reveals the profound inequalities of life under Israeli occupation.
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
An expose of the human toll of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which supplies most of the world's cobalt for electronics.
Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
An account of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Canada that destroyed the hub of Canada's oil industry and displaced 88,000 people.
2023
3 winners · 7 entriesDemon Copperhead
A modern retelling of David Copperfield set in Appalachian Virginia, exploring the opioid crisis through a boy's coming-of-age story.
Trust
A puzzle-box narrative examining wealth, power, and the nature of storytelling through four interconnected accounts set in Gilded Age New York.
The Immortal King Rao
In an advanced tech society, Athena carries her father's memories and desires to join a tech-free resistance movement.
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
A comprehensive biography of George Floyd that traces his life from Houston's Third Ward to his murder in Minneapolis.
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
The story of how China modernized its language system and fought to preserve Chinese characters in the digital age.
Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction
An exploration of how sound evolved on Earth and the threats facing the planet's acoustic diversity.
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation
An investigation into how racism in American medicine has led to devastating health disparities for Black Americans.
2022
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Netanyahus
A darkly comic historical novel about a Jewish historian's chaotic encounter with the Netanyahu family at a 1960s American college.
Monkey Boy
A semi-autobiographical novel about a writer returning to Boston to confront his traumatic childhood and family secrets.
Palmares
An epic novel following an enslaved woman in 17th-century Brazil and her quest for freedom in the legendary settlement of Palmares.
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
An eight-year investigation following a homeless girl named Dasani through the New York City shelter system.
Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism
An exploration of how former extremists from around the world have been deradicalized and reintegrated into society.
The Family Roe: An American Story
A comprehensive biography of Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff known as Jane Roe, and the legacy of Roe v. Wade.
2021
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Night Watchman
Based on Erdrich's grandfather's fight against Native American dispossession and termination policy in 1950s North Dakota.
A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
A collection of interconnected stories spanning centuries and continents, exploring the nature of storytelling itself.
Telephone
A novel about a geologist whose daughter falls ill with a mysterious disease, leading him on a journey to find answers.
Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
A gripping account of the violent overthrow of the elected government of a Black-majority North Carolina city after Reconstruction.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
A collection of essays exploring Asian American identity, art, and the psychology of racial consciousness in America.
Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
The true story of an Arikara woman's obsessive investigation into a murder on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
2020
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Nickel Boys
The story of two boys at a brutal reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, inspired by the true story of the Dozier School.
The Dutch House
A family saga spanning five decades about a brother and sister bound by their childhood home and the stepmother who banished them.
The Topeka School
A novel set in 1990s Kansas exploring masculinity, rhetoric, and the roots of contemporary American dysfunction.
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care
A memoir and meditation on cancer, mortality, and the failures of the American healthcare system.
Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement
An unflinching memoir of wrongful conviction and 44 years in solitary confinement at Louisiana's Angola prison.
Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life
A geriatrician's empathetic critique of how society and healthcare mistreat the elderly.
2019
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Overstory
An epic novel weaving together nine Americans whose lives are shaped by trees and environmental activism.
The Great Believers
A dual narrative exploring the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago and its lasting effects decades later in Paris.
There There
A multi-voiced novel following twelve urban Native Americans converging on a powwow in Oakland, California.
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America
A chronicle of an Appalachian family's struggle against corporate oil fracking and the destruction it wreaks on their community.
In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America's Most Vulnerable Workers
An investigation into sexual assault against low-wage immigrant women workers and their fight for justice.
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
A firsthand account of communities across America threatened by rising seas and climate change.
2018
2 winners · 6 entriesLess
A comic novel following a struggling novelist who travels the world to avoid his ex-boyfriend's wedding while confronting aging and love.
In the Distance
A Swedish immigrant's odyssey across 19th-century America, traveling from coast to coast the wrong way.
The Idiot
A young woman's first year at Harvard in the 1990s, navigating email, intellectual life, and unrequited love.
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
An examination of how Black communities contributed to mass incarceration while fighting for public safety.
Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World
An American journalist's reckoning with her country's foreign policy while living in Istanbul.
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us
An ornithologist's argument for the role of aesthetic evolution in shaping animal and human beauty.
2017
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Underground Railroad
A reimagining of American slavery where the Underground Railroad is a literal railway beneath the Southern soil.
Imagine Me Gone
A novel about a family haunted by mental illness across generations, exploring love, loyalty, and loss.
The Sport of Kings
An epic saga of race, class, and horse breeding in Kentucky spanning generations.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
An expose of the American housing crisis following eight families in Milwaukee facing eviction.
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
A sociologist's empathetic exploration of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana's petrochemical corridor.
In a Different Key: The Story of Autism
A comprehensive history of autism from its first diagnosis to the present day.
2016
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Sympathizer
A spy thriller about a communist double agent in the final days of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in America.
Get in Trouble
A collection of fantastical short stories blending horror, fairy tale, and science fiction.
Maud's Line
A novel set in 1920s Oklahoma Indian Territory about a Cherokee woman torn between tradition and change.
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS
An account of how Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's extremism and U.S. policy failures led to the rise of ISIS.
Between the World and Me
A letter to the author's teenage son about the history and reality of being Black in America.
Ordinary Light
A memoir about the author's childhood in California and her relationship with her mother.
2015
2 winners · 6 entriesAll the Light We Cannot See
A blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France during World War II.
The Moor's Account
A fictional memoir of the first Black explorer of America, an enslaved Moroccan man in 16th-century Florida.
Let Me Be Frank with You
Four linked stories continuing the saga of Frank Bascombe as he navigates life in post-Hurricane Sandy New Jersey.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
An investigation into the man-made mass extinction currently threatening Earth's biodiversity.
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
A portrait of contemporary China through the stories of ordinary people seeking prosperity and meaning.
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes
An account of the Afghanistan war told through three Afghans caught between American forces and the Taliban.
2014
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Goldfinch
A young man's life transformed after surviving a terrorist bombing at an art museum, centered on a stolen painting.
The Son
An epic multigenerational saga of a Texas family spanning 150 years of American expansion.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
A sprawling novel about an American woman whose death in Haiti leads to revelations about Cold War espionage.
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
An investigation into a New Jersey seashore town's cluster of childhood cancers linked to industrial pollution.
The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide
An account of how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan during the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh.
The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War
The story of how a small group of military officers transformed American counterinsurgency strategy.
2013
2 winners · 6 entriesThe Orphan Master's Son
A sweeping epic set in North Korea following a man who takes on the identity of a high-ranking official.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
A collection of stories exploring Jewish identity, faith, and the legacy of the Holocaust.
The Snow Child
A magical realist novel set in 1920s Alaska about a childless couple who build a snow girl that comes to life.
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
A chronicle of racial injustice in 1949 Florida where four Black men were falsely accused of rape.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
A portrait of life in a Mumbai slum as residents struggle to survive and rise amid corruption and poverty.
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
The fourth volume of Caro's LBJ biography, covering Kennedy's assassination and Johnson's ascent to power.
2012
2 winners · 7 entriesNo Award
Swamplandia!
A novel about a family of alligator wrestlers in the Florida Everglades whose tourist attraction is failing.
The Pale King
Wallace's unfinished posthumous novel about IRS employees in Illinois confronting boredom and meaning.
Train Dreams
A novella following a day laborer in the early 20th-century American West who loses everything to a forest fire.
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
The story of how a 15th-century book hunter's discovery of an ancient Roman poem helped launch the Renaissance.
One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing
A memoir about caring for the author's husband after a stroke destroyed his ability to use language.
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
An investigation into sex-selective abortion and its demographic consequences across Asia.
2011
2 winners · 6 entriesA Visit from the Goon Squad
An innovative, interconnected story about aging punk rockers and the passage of time in the digital age.
The Privileges
A novel following a wealthy Manhattan couple's rise through New York society and the costs of their ambition.
The Surrendered
A novel spanning decades about three characters whose lives intersect during the Korean War.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
A comprehensive history of cancer from ancient Egypt to modern targeted therapies.
Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy
A call for America to invest in clean energy technology and green jobs.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
An examination of how the internet is rewiring our brains and affecting our ability to think deeply.
2010
2 winners · 6 entriesTinkers
A dying man's memories of his father and grandfather in rural New England, a meditation on time and mortality.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
A story collection about social status and expectations within Pakistani culture across different classes.
Love in Infant Monkeys
A collection of stories featuring celebrities and the animals that cross their paths.
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
An examination of the Cold War doomsday competition between superpowers and the continued threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
A call to action against gender-based violence and oppression of women in the developing world.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
The story of the eccentric traders and investors who foresaw the 2008 financial crisis and bet against the housing market.