The 25 best Pulitzer Prize-winning novels
The 25 highest-ranked winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 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 63 Pulitzer Prize-winning novels in all. How we rank
- 1
James99.0Must-Read ScoreJames
Huckleberry Finn, retold by the man on the raft.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2025)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (2024)#1 New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1)52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2024 - 2
Demon Copperhead96.3Must-Read ScoreDemon Copperhead
Dickens's David Copperfield, moved to the mountains of Lee County, Virginia, in the 1990s and 2000s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2023)Women's Prize for Fiction winner (2023)81 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2022Goodreads Choice (fiction) finalist (2022) - 3
Gone with the Wind95.3Must-Read ScoreGone with the Wind
It's 1861 in north Georgia, and sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled, scheming belle of the plantation Tara, cares about nothing but the man she can't have, Ashley Wilkes.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1937)One of the best-selling books ever (about 30 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (33 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 4
To Kill a Mockingbird95.0Must-Read ScoreTo Kill a Mockingbird
In the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s, six-year-old Scout Finch spends her summers with her brother Jem and their friend Dill, daring each other to approach the house of their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1961)One of the best-selling books ever (about 40 million copies)One of the ten best-selling books of 1961, 2015 and 2016 (Publishers Weekly)TIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 5
All the Light We Cannot See92.9Must-Read ScoreAll the Light We Cannot See
Marie-Laure, blind since six, lives in Paris with her father, who builds her a miniature of their neighborhood so she can learn its streets by touch.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2015)#1 New York Times bestseller (3 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 2015 and 2016 (Publishers Weekly)National Book Award (Fiction) finalist (2014) - 6
The Color Purple91.8Must-Read ScoreThe Color Purple
Rural Georgia, early 1900s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1983)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1983)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1982)PBS Great American Read - 7
Lonesome Dove89.6Must-Read ScoreLonesome Dove
In the dusty Texas border town of Lonesome Dove, two retired Texas Rangers, the talkative, easygoing Gus McCrae and the hard, silent Woodrow Call, run a small cattle business and have settled into old age.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1986)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1985)PBS Great American Read - 8
The Caine Mutiny88.8Must-Read ScoreThe Caine Mutiny
Willie Keith is a privileged, aimless young man from Princeton who joins the Navy in World War II and is assigned to the USS Caine, a battered old minesweeper in the Pacific.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1952)#1 New York Times bestseller (48 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1951 and 1952 (Publishers Weekly)Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 9
The Nickel Boys88.1Must-Read ScoreThe Nickel Boys
In early-1960s Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis is a bright, principled Black teenager inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2020)25 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2019NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (2019) - 10
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay87.0Must-Read ScoreThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
In 1939, young magician-in-training Josef Kavalier escapes Nazi-occupied Prague in a daring Houdini-style escape and lands in Brooklyn with his cousin Sammy Clayman.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2001)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (2000)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 11
The Stories of John Cheever86.6Must-Read ScoreThe Stories of John Cheever
Sixty-one stories from the writer known as the Chekhov of the suburbs, published over three decades in The New Yorker.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1979)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1981)NBCC Award (Fiction) winner (1978) - 12
The Grapes of Wrath86.5Must-Read ScoreThe Grapes of Wrath
When the Dust Bowl and the banks drive them off their Oklahoma farm in the 1930s, the Joad family, newly paroled Tom Joad, his determined mother, his grandparents and the rest, pile everything onto a truck and head west on Route 66 toward the promise of work in California.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1940)#1 New York Times bestseller (24 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1939 and 1940 (Publishers Weekly)TIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 13
Angle of Repose85.8Must-Read ScoreAngle of Repose
Lyman Ward, a retired historian confined to a wheelchair and estranged from his family, sets out to write about his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, a talented artist from the East who married a mining engineer in the 1870s and followed him to the raw mining camps of California, Colorado, Mexico and Idaho.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1972)Modern Library 100 Best Novels - 14
The Overstory85.7Must-Read ScoreThe Overstory
Nine strangers each have a life shaped by trees.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2019)75 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2018Booker Prize finalist (2018)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 15
The Underground Railroad84.6Must-Read ScoreThe Underground Railroad
Cora is an enslaved young woman on a cotton plantation in Georgia, an outcast even among the other enslaved people.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2017)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (2016)51 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2016Booker Prize longlist (2017) - 16
The Killer Angels84.1Must-Read ScoreThe Killer Angels
The four days of the Battle of Gettysburg, from June 30 to July 3, 1863, told through the men who fought it: Robert E.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1975) - 17
All the King's Men82.6Must-Read ScoreAll the King's Men
Jack Burden is a cynical former newspaperman who goes to work for Willie Stark, a rural lawyer who becomes a populist governor of a southern state in the 1930s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1947)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsGuardian 100 Best Novels in English - 18
Beloved81.7Must-Read ScoreBeloved
In 1873, Sethe, who escaped slavery eighteen years earlier, lives with her teenage daughter Denver in a house outside Cincinnati that is haunted by the furious ghost of her baby girl.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1988)National Book Award (Fiction) finalist (1987)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1987)TIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 19
The Road81.2Must-Read ScoreThe Road
After an unexplained catastrophe has burned the world, a father and his young son walk south through a dead America toward the coast, pushing a shopping cart that holds everything they own.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2007)52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2008NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 20
Interpreter of Maladies80.5Must-Read ScoreInterpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri's first book is a collection of nine stories about Indians and Indian Americans.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2000) - 21
The Goldfinch80.5Must-Read ScoreThe Goldfinch
Thirteen-year-old Theo Decker is visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother when a bomb goes off.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2014)#1 New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1)111 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2013Women's Prize for Fiction finalist (2014) - 22
The Age of Innocence80.2Must-Read ScoreThe Age of Innocence
New York, the 1870s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1921)One of the ten best-selling books of 1921 (Publishers Weekly)Modern Library 100 Best NovelsGuardian 100 Best Novels in English - 23
The Orphan Master's Son79.7Must-Read ScoreThe Orphan Master's Son
Pak Jun Do grows up in a North Korean work camp for orphans and becomes a loyal servant of the state: a tunnel soldier, a kidnapper of Japanese citizens, a radio spy on a fishing boat, a member of a delegation to Texas.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2013)47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2012NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (2012) - 24
Middlesex79.5Must-Read ScoreMiddlesex
"I was born twice," Cal Stephanides begins: first as a baby girl in Detroit in 1960, then again as a teenage boy.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2003)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - 25
Advise and Consent79.3Must-Read ScoreAdvise and Consent
The president nominates Robert Leffingwell, a brilliant but divisive liberal, to be Secretary of State, and the Senate must decide whether to confirm him.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1960)#1 New York Times bestseller (28 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1959 and 1960 (Publishers Weekly)
