With so many books published every year, it can be hard to know what to read. Let the experts help narrow it down with these award-winning books. Spanning all genres, these are the books and authors deemed the best by associations that know about literature.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Featured Author
Louise Glück
The 2020 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Louise Glück for her achievements in poetry over the last 50 years. Glück’s first poetry compilation, Firstborn, was published in 1968, and she has been wowing and enchanting the poetic world with her mastery of language ever since.
More from this author
The International Booker Prize
This prize is awarded to an English-language book and honors not just the book, but the author for outstanding achievement in writing. The 2020 award went to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening.
The Booker Prize
Outside of the Nobel and Pulitzer, the Booker Prize is one of the most highly regarded literary awards. One book is chosen every year from a list of nominees. While the 2020 winner will not be announced until later this month, here are the five books that made the coveted short list.
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer is one of the most well-known writing awards. Awarding across all genres, a win here shows a true mastery of the craft of writing. Here are the winners for the 2020 Pulitzers in Fiction, Drama, History, Biography, and Poetry. This year's winner for Fiction was Colson Whitehead, and this was his second Pulitzer.
Women's Prize for Fiction
The Women's Prize for Fiction was created to spotlight women in writing, and spotlights excellence, creativity, and originality. The 2020 awards were its 25th year, and the top prize went to Maggie O'Farrell for Hamnet, a fascinating, fictionalized look into the life of Shakespeare's only son.
Edgar Awards
Named for Edgar Allen Poe and awarded by the Mystery Writers of America, the Edgard award spotlights excellency in Mystery writing and is the most prestigious award in the genre. 2020's best novel honor went to The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffith, a modern gothic tale of a literary murder.
Hugo Awards
For the Sci-Fi fans, there are the Hugo Awards. These awards are administered by the World Science Fiction Convention, so you know they know the best of the best. The honor of Best Novel this year went to Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. This book is a space opera with political sabotage, murder, and intrigue set in the backdrop of an interstellar mining station.
Newbery Award
The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. This year's top honor went to New Kid by Jerry Craft, a graphic novel about learning to fit in in middle school.
Book Critics Circle Awards
The Book Critics Circle Awards (BCCA) are awarded every year to the finest English language books in six genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. While the 2020 BCCA awards will not be awarded until next Spring, here are the 2019 winners.
The PEN/Faulkner Award
When a writing award shares its name with William Faulkner, you can bet they are choosing a book that shows complete mastery of the craft of writing. The PEN portion of the name is short for Poetry, Editors, and Novelists, a representation of those who give the award. This year's top prize for fiction went to Chloe Aridjis for Sea Monsters, a fantastic, surreal novel about the journey of a teenage girl to find adventure and her father's journey to find her.
The Caldecott Medal
The Caldecott Medal is named in honor of nineteenth-century illustrator Randolph Caldecott and is award annually by the Children’s division of the American Library Association for excellence in illustration of children's literature. Kadir Nelson earned the honor this year for his illustrations of Kwame Alexander's The Undefeated.
