List: National Book Critics Circle Award

First awarded in 1976, the National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote the finest books and reviews published in English.

The main awards fall into six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Awards are not given to titles that have been previously published in English, such as re-issues and paperback editions.

I confess I bear a grudge against the NBCC Award for inflicting Being Dead, All the Pretty Horses, and Song of Solomon on me -- all which I read only because they were on this list.  On the other hand, I only read Motherless Brooklyn because it was here, and I loved that book.

This is the list of fiction winners. Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

2020 Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

2019 Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat

2018 Milkman by Anna Burns

2017 Improvement by Joan Silber

2016 LaRose by Louise Erdrich

2015 The Sellout by Paul Beatty

2014 Lila by Marilynne Robinson

2013 Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2012 Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

2011 Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman

2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2009 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (reviewed here)

2008 2666 by Robert Bolano

2007 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2006 The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

2005 The March by E.L. Doctorow

2004 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (reviewed here)

2003 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2002 Atonement by Ian McEwan

2001 Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald

2000 Being Dead by Jim Crace

1999 Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

1998 The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro

1997 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

1996 Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault

1995 Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin

1994 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1993 A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac Mccarthy (reviewed here)

1991 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

1990 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

1989 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow

1988 The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee

1987 The Counterlife by Philip Roth

1986 Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price

1985 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

1984 Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

1983 Ironweed by William Kennedy

1982 George Mills by Stanley Elkin

1981 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

1980 The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

1979 The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

1978 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (reviewed here)

1977 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

1976 October Light by John C Gardner

NOTE

Last updated on December 31, 2018.

OTHERS READING THE BOOKS ON THIS LIST

If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.