The 25 best Booker Prize winners
The 25 highest-ranked Booker Prize winners in our ranking of 3,056, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 37 Booker Prize winners in all. How we rank
- 1
The Handmaid’s Tale89.8Must-Read ScoreThe Handmaid’s Tale
In the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy that has overthrown the United States government, women have been stripped of their rights, and a falling birth rate has led the regime to assign fertile women to powerful men as handmaids, whose only purpose is to bear children.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2019, for The Testaments)144 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2017Booker Prize finalist (1986)Nebula Award finalist (1986) - 2
Shuggie Bain88.5Must-Read ScoreShuggie Bain
Glasgow in the 1980s, as Thatcher's policies close the mines and factories and the city sinks into poverty.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2020)National Book Award (Fiction) finalist (2020) - 3
Schindler's List86.5Must-Read ScoreSchindler's List
Oskar Schindler was a German businessman, Nazi Party member, war profiteer, drinker and womanizer who came to Kraków to make money from cheap Jewish labor.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1982)Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 4
Girl, Woman, Other85.4Must-Read ScoreGirl, Woman, Other
Twelve characters, mostly Black British women, tell interlocking stories that range across a century.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2019)Women's Prize for Fiction finalist (2020) - 5
The Remains of the Day81.6Must-Read ScoreThe Remains of the Day
In 1956, Stevens, the aging butler of Darlington Hall, takes a rare holiday: a road trip across the English countryside to visit Miss Kenton, the estate's former housekeeper.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1989)Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 6
The Bone People81.2Must-Read ScoreThe Bone People
On the harsh South Island coast of New Zealand, Kerewin Holmes, a reclusive painter convinced that to care for anything is to invite disaster, finds a mute six-year-old boy, Simon, in her tower home.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1985) - 7
Midnight's Children80.1Must-Read ScoreMidnight's Children
Saleem Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1981)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsBokklubben World Library (100 greatest books) - 8
Wolf Hall79.2Must-Read ScoreWolf Hall
Thomas Cromwell, the son of a brutal blacksmith, rises to become the right-hand man of King Henry VIII in the 1520s and 1530s.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2009)NBCC Award (Fiction) winner (2009)Booker Prize winner (2012, for Bring Up the Bodies)69 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2009 - 9
The Narrow Road to the Deep North74.7Must-Read ScoreThe Narrow Road to the Deep North
Dorrigo Evans is an Australian army surgeon held in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, trying to keep his men alive as they are worked to death building the Thai-Burma railway.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2014) - 10
The Blind Assassin74.6Must-Read ScoreThe Blind Assassin
Iris Chase Griffen, eighty-two, tells the story of her family and of her sister Laura, who in 1945 drove a car off a bridge ten days after the war ended.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2000)Women's Prize for Fiction finalist (2001)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsGuardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 11
Prophet Song74.6Must-Read ScoreProphet Song
Paul Lynch's novel is a portrait of a society on the brink: in an Ireland falling into tyranny, a mother tries to hold her family together after her husband disappears, and faces a terrible choice.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2023) - 12
Troubles74.4Must-Read ScoreTroubles
1919: after surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer comes to Ireland to find out whether he is really engaged to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the crumbling Majestic Hotel on the west coast.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1970) - 13
Life of Pi73.5Must-Read ScoreLife of Pi
Pi Patel is a sixteen-year-old boy from Pondicherry, India, who practices Hinduism, Christianity and Islam all at once.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2002)46 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2012 - 14
The God of Small Things73.0Must-Read ScoreThe God of Small Things
In 1969, in a small town in Kerala, India, seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel live with their mother, Ammu, in her family's house.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1997)BBC's The Big ReadGuardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 15
A Brief History of Seven Killings73.0Must-Read ScoreA Brief History of Seven Killings
In December 1976, gunmen burst into Bob Marley's house in Kingston, Jamaica, and nearly killed him.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2015)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (2014)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 16
Possession72.7Must-Read ScorePossession
Roland Michell, a struggling young scholar in London, finds two drafts of a passionate letter written by a famous Victorian poet to an unknown woman.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1990)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsBBC's The Big ReadGuardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 17
Regeneration70.9Must-Read ScoreRegeneration
Pat Barker's novel centers on a real meeting at Craiglockhart hospital in 1917 between army psychologist W.H.R.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1995, for The Ghost Road)Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 18
G.70.7Must-Read ScoreG.
John Berger's novel follows G., the illegitimate son of a rich Italian merchant and an American woman, from his childhood in the 1880s to the First World War.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1972) - 19
The Sea, the Sea70.5Must-Read ScoreThe Sea, the Sea
Charles Arrowby, a famous, vain London theater director, retires to a lonely house by the sea to write his memoirs.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1978) - 20
Disgrace70.1Must-Read ScoreDisgrace
David Lurie, a fifty-two-year-old professor in Cape Town, has an affair with a student and is disgraced, refusing to apologize.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1999)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1999)Guardian 100 Best Novels in EnglishGuardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 21
The Promise69.4Must-Read ScoreThe Promise
Damon Galgut's novel follows a white South African family over several decades, and a promise the family made and never kept, as the country moves through the end of apartheid and beyond.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2021) - 22
The Sellout69.2Must-Read ScoreThe Sellout
The narrator, a Black farmer and pot grower in a Los Angeles neighborhood so neglected it's been removed from the map, sets out to put it back.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2016)NBCC Award (Fiction) winner (2015)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 23
Lincoln in the Bardo68.4Must-Read ScoreLincoln in the Bardo
In February 1862, as the Civil War rages, Abraham Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie dies.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2017)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 24
The White Tiger67.8Must-Read ScoreThe White Tiger
Balram Halwai is a servant, philosopher, entrepreneur and murderer.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2008)57 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2008 - 25
True History of the Kelly Gang67.5Must-Read ScoreTrue History of the Kelly Gang
Ned Kelly, Australia's most famous outlaw, writes his own story for the daughter he'll never meet: growing up desperately poor in a family of Irish immigrants in colonial Australia, being apprenticed to a bushranger at fifteen, the police who hounded his family, and how he became a wanted man who made armor from plowshares.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2001)Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Novels in English
