# National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, established in 1976, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English."
Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories."
The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers." Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March.

## Recipients

National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1975 | E. L. Doctorow | Ragtime | Winner |
| 1976 | John Gardner | October Light | Winner |
| 1976 | Cynthia Ozick | Bloodshed and Three Novellas | Finalist |
| 1976 | Vladimir Nabokov | Details of a Sunset and Other Stories | Finalist |
| 1976 | Renata Adler | Speedboat | Finalist |
| 1976 | Richard Yates | The Easter Parade | Finalist |
| 1977 | Toni Morrison | Song of Solomon | Winner |
| 1977 | Joan Didion | A Book of Common Prayer | Finalist |
| 1977 | John Cheever | Falconer | Finalist |
| 1977 | Philip Roth | The Professor of Desire | Finalist |
| 1977 | John Sayles | Union Dues | Finalist |
| 1978 | John Cheever | The Stories of John Cheever | Winner |
| 1978 | Mary Gordon | Final Payments | Finalist |
| 1978 | John Updike | The Coup | Finalist |
| 1978 | John Irving | The World According to Garp | Finalist |
| 1978 | Charles Simmons | Wrinkles | Finalist |
| 1979 | Thomas Flanagan | The Year of the French | Winner |
| 1979 | Leslie Epstein | King of the Jews: A Novel of the Holocaust | Finalist |
| 1979 | Elizabeth Hardwick | Sleepless Nights | Finalist |
| 1979 | William Styron | Sophie's Choice | Finalist |
| 1979 | Norman Mailer | The Executioner's Song: A True Life Novel | Finalist |
| 1979 | Philip Roth | The Ghost Writer | Finalist |
| 1980 | Shirley Hazzard | The Transit of Venus | Winner |
| 1980 | E. L. Doctorow | Loon Lake | Finalist |
| 1980 | Anne Tyler | Morgan's Passing | Finalist |
| 1980 | William Maxwell | So Long, See You Tomorrow | Finalist |
| 1980 | Walker Percy | The Second Coming | Finalist |
| 1981 | John Updike | Rabbit Is Rich | Winner |
| 1981 | Robert Stone | A Flag for Sunrise | Finalist |
| 1981 | Russell Hoban | Riddley Walker | Finalist |
| 1981 | Donald Barthelme | Sixty Stories | Finalist |
| 1981 | Leonard Michaels | The Men's Club | Finalist |
| 1982 | Stanley Elkin | George Mills | Winner |
| 1982 | Anne Tyler | Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant | Finalist |
| 1982 | Cynthia Ozick | Levitation: Five Fictions | Finalist |
| 1982 | Bobbie Ann Mason | Shiloh and Other Stories | Finalist |
| 1982 | Alice Walker | The Color Purple | Finalist |
| 1983 | William Kennedy | Ironweed | Winner |
| 1983 | Raymond Carver | Cathedral | Finalist |
| 1983 | Joan Chase | During the Reign of the Queen of Persia | Finalist |
| 1983 | Ron Loewinsohn | Magnetic Field (s) | Finalist |
| 1983 | Philip Roth | The Anatomy Lesson | Finalist |
| 1984 | Louise Erdrich | Love Medicine | Winner |
| 1984 | David Leavitt | Family Dancing | Finalist |
| 1984 | Alison Lurie | Foreign Affairs | Finalist |
| 1984 | Jayne Anne Phillips | Machine Dreams | Finalist |
| 1984 | Harriet Doerr | Stones for Ibarra | Finalist |
| 1985 | Anne Tyler | The Accidental Tourist | Winner |
| 1985 | Larry McMurtry | Lonesome Dove | Finalist |
| 1985 | Peter Taylor | The Old Forest and Other Stories | Finalist |
| 1985 | Richard Powers | Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance | Finalist |
| 1985 | Don DeLillo | White Noise | Finalist |
| 1986 | Reynolds Price | Kate Vaiden | Winner |
| 1986 | Peter Taylor | A Summons to Memphis | Finalist |
| 1986 | John Updike | Roger's Version | Finalist |
| 1986 | Louise Erdrich | The Beet Queen | Finalist |
| 1986 | Thomas Williams | The Moon Pinnacle | Finalist |
| 1987 | Philip Roth | The Counterlife | Winner |
| 1987 | Toni Morrison | Beloved | Finalist |
| 1987 | Wallace Stegner | Crossing to Safety | Finalist |
| 1987 | Jane Smiley | The Age of Grief | Finalist |
| 1987 | Tom Wolfe | The Bonfire of the Vanities | Finalist |
| 1988 | Bharati Mukherjee | The Middleman and Other Stories | Winner |
| 1988 | Don DeLillo | Libra | Finalist |
| 1988 | Pete Dexter | Paris Trout | Finalist |
| 1988 | J. F. Powers | Wheat That Springeth Green | Finalist |
| 1988 | Raymond Carver | Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories | Finalist |
| 1989 | E. L. Doctorow | Billy Bathgate | Winner |
| 1989 | Jane Smiley | Ordinary Love & Good Will | Finalist |
| 1989 | John Casey | Spartina | Finalist |
| 1989 | Amy Tan | The Joy Luck Club | Finalist |
| 1989 | Oscar Hijuelos | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love | Finalist |
| 1990 | John Updike | Rabbit at Rest | Winner |
| 1990 | Wallace Stegner | Collected Stories | Finalist |
| 1990 | Sue Miller | Family Pictures | Finalist |
| 1990 | Charles Johnson | Middle Passage | Finalist |
| 1990 | Tim O’Brien | The Things They Carried | Finalist |
| 1991 | Jane Smiley | A Thousand Acres | Winner |
| 1991 | Norman Rush | Mating | Finalist |
| 1991 | Richard Powers | The Gold Bug Variations | Finalist |
| 1991 | Gish Jen | Typical American | Finalist |
| 1991 | Louis Begley | Wartime Lies | Finalist |
| 1992 | Cormac McCarthy | All the Pretty Horses | Winner |
| 1992 | Joyce Carol Oates | Black Water | Finalist |
| 1992 | Richard Price | Clockers | Finalist |
| 1992 | Randall Kenan | Let the Dead Bury Their Dead | Finalist |
| 1992 | Robert Stone | Outerbridge Reach | Finalist |
| 1993 | Ernest J. Gaines | A Lesson Before Dying | Winner |
| 1993 | Bobbie Ann Mason | Feather Crowns | Finalist |
| 1993 | Rikki Ducornet | The Jade Cabinet | Finalist |
| 1993 | E. Annie Proulx | The Shipping News | Finalist |
| 1993 | Frances Sherwood | Vindication | Finalist |
| 1994 | Carol Shields | The Stone Diaries | Winner |
| 1994 | William Gaddis | A Frolic of His Own | Finalist |
| 1994 | Julius Lester | And All Our Wounds Forgiven | Finalist |
| 1994 | Julia Alvarez | In the Time of the Butterflies | Finalist |
| 1994 | Alan Isler | The Prince of West End Avenue | Finalist |
| 1995 | Stanley Elkin | Mrs. Ted Bliss | Winner |
| 1995 | Richard Powers | Galatea 2.2 | Finalist |
| 1995 | Richard Ford | Independence Day | Finalist |
| 1995 | Jane Smiley | Moo | Finalist |
| 1995 | Paul West | The Tent of Orange Mist | Finalist |
| 1996 | Gina Berriault | Women in Their Beds | Winner |
| 1996 | Louis Begley | About Schmidt | Finalist |
| 1996 | Andre Dubus | Dancing After Hours | Finalist |
| 1996 | Henry Roth | From Bondage | Finalist |
| 1996 | Jamaica Kincaid | The Autobiography of My Mother | Finalist |
| 1997 | Penelope Fitzgerald | The Blue Flower | Winner |
| 1997 | Philip Roth | American Pastoral | Finalist |
| 1997 | Charles Frazier | Cold Mountain | Finalist |
| 1997 | Andrei Makine | Dreams of My Russian Summers | Finalist |
| 1997 | Don DeLillo | Underworld | Finalist |
| 1998 | Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman | Winner |
| 1998 | Lorrie Moore | Birds of America | Finalist |
| 1998 | Lynne Tillman | No Lease on Life | Finalist |
| 1998 | David Gates | Preston Falls | Finalist |
| 1998 | Michael Cunningham | The Hours | Finalist |
| 1999 | Jonathan Lethem | Motherless Brooklyn | Winner |
| 1999 | J. M. Coetzee | Disgrace | Finalist |
| 1999 | A. Manette Ansay | Midnight Champagne | Finalist |
| 1999 | Frederick Busch | The Night Inspector | Finalist |
| 1999 | David Gates | The Wonders of the Invisible World | Finalist |
| 2000 | Jim Crace | Being Dead | Winner |
| 2000 | Amy Bloom | A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You | Finalist |
| 2000 | David Means | Assorted Fire Events | Finalist |
| 2000 | Michael Chabon | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay | Finalist |
| 2000 | Zadie Smith | White Teeth | Finalist |
| 2001 | W.G. Sebald with Anthea Bell (trans.) | Austerlitz | Winner |
| 2002 | Ian McEwan | Atonement | Winner |
| 2003 | Edward P. Jones | The Known World | Winner |
| 2004 | Marilynne Robinson | Gilead | Winner |
| 2005 | E. L. Doctorow | The March | Winner |
| 2006 | Kiran Desai | The Inheritance of Loss | Winner |
| 2007 | Junot Díaz | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Winner |
| 2007 | Hisham Matar | In the Country of Men | Finalist |
| 2007 | Joyce Carol Oates | The Gravedigger's Daughter | Finalist |
| 2007 | Marianne Wiggins | The Shadow Catcher | Finalist |
| 2007 | Vikram Chandra | Sacred Games | Finalist |
| 2008 | Roberto Bolaño with Natasha Wimmer (trans.) | 2666 | Winner |
| 2008 | Aleksandar Hemon | The Lazarus Project | Finalist |
| 2008 | Elizabeth Strout | Olive Kitteridge | Finalist |
| 2008 | M. Glenn Taylor | The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart | Finalist |
| 2008 | Marilynne Robinson | Home | Finalist |
| 2009 | Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall | Winner |
| 2009 | Bonnie Jo Campbell | American Salvage | Finalist |
| 2009 | Jayne Anne Phillips | Lark and Termite | Finalist |
| 2009 | Marlon James | The Book of Night Women | Finalist |
| 2009 | Michelle Huneven | Blame | Finalist |
| 2010 | Jennifer Egan | A Visit from the Goon Squad | Winner |
| 2010 | David Grossman | To The End of the Land | Finalist |
| 2010 | Hans Keilson | Comedy in a Minor Key | Finalist |
| 2010 | Jonathan Franzen | Freedom | Finalist |
| 2010 | Paul Murray | Skippy Dies | Finalist |
| 2011 | Edith Pearlman | Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories | Winner |
| 2011 | Alan Hollinghurst | The Stranger's Child | Finalist |
| 2011 | Dana Spiotta | Stone Arabia | Finalist |
| 2011 | Jeffrey Eugenides | The Marriage Plot | Finalist |
| 2011 | Teju Cole | Open City | Finalist |
| 2012 | Ben Fountain | Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk | Winner |
| 2012 | Adam Johnson | The Orphan Master's Son | Finalist |
| 2012 | Laurent Binet with Sam Taylor (trans.) | HHhH | Finalist |
| 2012 | Lydia Millet | Magnificence | Finalist |
| 2012 | Zadie Smith | NW | Finalist |
| 2013 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Americanah | Winner |
| 2013 | Alice McDermott | Someone | Finalist |
| 2013 | Donna Tartt | The Goldfinch | Finalist |
| 2013 | Javier Marías with Margaret Jull Costa (trans.) | The Infatuations | Finalist |
| 2013 | Ruth Ozeki | A Tale for the Time Being | Finalist |
| 2014 | Marilynne Robinson | Lila | Winner |
| 2014 | Chang-rae Lee | On Such a Full Sea | Finalist |
| 2014 | Lily King | Euphoria | Finalist |
| 2014 | Marlon James | A Brief History of Seven Killings | Finalist |
| 2014 | Rabih Alameddine | An Unnecessary Woman | Finalist |
| 2015 | Paul Beatty | The Sellout | Winner |
| 2015 | Anthony Marra | The Tsar of Love and Techno | Finalist |
| 2015 | Lauren Groff | Fates and Furies | Finalist |
| 2015 | Ottessa Moshfegh | Eileen | Finalist |
| 2015 | Valeria Luiselli | The Story of My Teeth | Finalist |
| 2016 | Louise Erdrich | LaRose | Winner |
| 2016 | Adam Haslett | Imagine Me Gone | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ann Patchett | Commonwealth | Finalist |
| 2016 | Michael Chabon | Moonglow: A Novel | Finalist |
| 2016 | Zadie Smith | Swing Time | Finalist |
| 2017 | Joan Silber | Improvement | Winner |
| 2017 | Alice McDermott | The Ninth Hour | Finalist |
| 2017 | Arundhati Roy | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Finalist |
| 2017 | Jesmyn Ward | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Finalist |
| 2017 | Mohsin Hamid | Exit West | Finalist |
| 2018 | Anna Burns | Milkman | Winner |
| 2018 | Denis Johnson | The Largesse of the Sea Maiden | Finalist |
| 2018 | Luis Alberto Urrea | The House of Broken Angels | Finalist |
| 2018 | Patrick Chamoiseau with Linda Coverdale (trans.) | Slave Old Man | Finalist |
| 2018 | Rachel Kushner | The Mars Room | Finalist |
| 2019 | Edwidge Danticat | Everything Inside | Winner |
| 2019 | Ben Lerner | The Topeka School | Finalist |
| 2019 | Colson Whitehead | The Nickel Boys | Finalist |
| 2019 | Myla Goldberg | Feast Your Eyes | Finalist |
| 2019 | Valeria Luiselli | Lost Children Archive | Finalist |
| 2020 | Maggie O'Farrell | Hamnet | Winner |
| 2020 | Bryan Washington | Memorial | Finalist |
| 2020 | Martin Amis | Inside Story | Finalist |
| 2020 | Randall Kenan | If I Had Two Wings | Finalist |
| 2020 | Souvankham Thammavongsa | How to Pronounce Knife | Finalist |
| 2021 | Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois | Winner |
| 2021 | Colson Whitehead | Harlem Shuffle | Finalist |
| 2021 | Joshua Cohen | The Netanyahus | Finalist |
| 2021 | Rachel Cusk | Second Place | Finalist |
| 2021 | Sarah Hall | Burntcoat | Finalist |
| 2022 | Ling Ma | Bliss Montage | Winner |
| 2022 | Percival Everett | Dr. No | Finalist |
| 2022 | Jon Fosse with Damion Searls (trans.) | A New Name | Finalist |
| 2022 | Mieko Kawakami with Sam Bett and David Boyd (trans.) | All the Lovers in the Night | Finalist |
| 2022 | Namwali Serpell | The Furrows | Finalist |
| 2023 | Lorrie Moore | I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home | Winner |
| 2023 | Teju Cole | Tremor | Finalist |
| 2023 | Daniel Mason | North Woods | Finalist |
| 2023 | Marie NDiaye with Jordan Stump (trans.) | Vengeance Is Mine | Finalist |
| 2023 | Justin Torres | Blackouts | Finalist |