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The Greatest Historical Fiction

This selection of the 222 works of historical fiction is based on the continuing research carried out for The Greatest Literature of All Time and additional research into historical fiction acclaimed by the world's readers, writers, critics and scholars.

The definition of historical fiction is elastic. Everyone agrees it takes place in the past, but how far in the past is debated. At least sixty years before the time of writing, say some. Thirty years, say others. Before the writer's lifetime, say still others. In creating this list, we have sought titles a consensus of readers seem to consider historical fiction, as far as we can tell.

The Greatest Historical Fiction focuses on major works of historical fiction, including novels, novellas and story collections. Historical series comprising multiple works can be found on a separate Greatest list.

The list is continually updated as new works are discovered and appreciation of older works evolves. Please note the current revision date when citing the list.

Latest update: April 5, 2025

c.1020
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The Tale of Genji
Novel

Sometimes The Tale of Genji is called the world's first novel, though it can feel more like the world's first soap opera. To begin with, it never ends. It's very, very long and the plot never comes to a resolution. Various.... CritiqueQuotesTranslationsBuy

c.1360–1400
 
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
by Luo Guanzhong, China
Novel, also known as Wives and Concubines
c.1360–1589
 
Water Margin
by Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, China
Novel, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh
1592
 
Journey to the West
by Wu Cheng'en, China
Novel
1594
 
The Unfortunate Traveller
by Thomas Nashe, England
Novel
1678
 
La Princesse de Clèves
by Madame de La Fayette, France
Novel
1764
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The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole, England
Novella

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto is one of those "classic" works that is better known for its impact in its time that for its subsequent readability. It's more influential than admired. In fact, any reader today is likely.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1800
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Castle Rackrent
by Maria Edgeworth, Ireland
Novella

It's to the credit of Castle Rackrent that it's usually taken to be a novel. By its meagre word count, the text constitutes a novella and—shorn of introduction, footnotes and glossary—barely that. But Maria Edgeworth's.... CritiqueQuotesTextBuy

1803
 
Thaddeus of Warsaw
by Jane Porter, England
Novel
1814
 
Waverley
by Walter Scott, Scotland
Novel
1817
 
Rob Roy
by Walter Scott, Scotland
Novel
1819
 
Ivanhoe
by Walter Scott, Scotland
Novel
1826
 
The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper, United States
Novel
1827–1842
 
The Betrothed
by Alessandro Manzoni, Italy
Novel
1828
 
Rachel Dyer
by John Neal, United States
Novel
1829
 
The Chouans
by Honoré de Balzac, France
Novel
1831
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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
by Victor-Marie Hugo, France
Novel, also known as Notre-Dame de Paris

Thanks in part to movies based on it, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame calls up images of Gothic horror in the public imagination. The novel is associated with other dark nineteenth-century classics like Frankenstein.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1834
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The Last Days of Pompeii
Novel

It starts with an evening not at all dark or stormy, something like an ancient Greek dialogue actually—two friends meeting and discussing their dining plans. But already the signs of bad writing are evident. And it's all.... CritiqueQuotesAt the moviesBuy

1836
 
The Captain's Daughter
by Alexander Pushkin, Russia
Novel
1838
 
The Lion of Flanders
by Hendrik Conscience, Belgium
Novel
1839
 
Charterhouse of Parma
by Stendhal, France
Novel
1842
 
Windsor Castle
by William Harrison Ainsworth, England
Novel
1844
 
The Luck of Barry Lyndon
by William Makepeace Thackeray, England
Novel, also known as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.
 
 
The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas, France
Novel
1844–1846
 
The Count of Monte-Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas, France
Novel
1845
 
Twenty Years After
by Alexandre Dumas, France
Novel
1847
 
The Vicomte of Bragelonne
by Alexandre Dumas, France
Novel
1848
 
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray, England
Novel
1850
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The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, United States
Novel

Everyone knows the general story of The Scarlet Letter as referenced in the title. A young, married woman in an early American colony, Hester Prynne, becomes pregnant from an affair with a man she refuses to name, and.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1855
 
Westward Ho!
by Charles Kingsley, England
Novel
1858
 
The Confessions of an Italian
by Ippolito Nievo, Italy
Novel
1859
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A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens, England
Novel

It's the most political of Charles Dickens's novels, it's the least political—even anti-political—of Dickens's novels in some ways. But its positions on politics, revolution, mob rule, democracy and reformism has tended to.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

 
 
The Virginians
by William Makepeace Thackeray, England
Novel
1862
 
Salammbô
by Gustave Flaubert, France
Novel
 
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Les Misérables
by Victor-Marie Hugo, France
Novel

Les Misérables is one of the few translated books English speakers know by the original title, in part because we are familiar with the name (or its abbreviation Les Miz) from popular film and stage productions. But.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1863
 
Romola
by George Eliot, England
Novel
1865–1869
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War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy, Russia
Novel, originally Voyná i mir

After spending a good part of a summer living in and out of War and Peace, I was dismayed to learn Leo Tolstoy disdained the book in his latter years. The novel, whose title has become shorthand for monumentally.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1866
 
Hereward the Wake
by Charles Kingsley, England
Novel
1872
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Middlemarch
by George Eliot, England
Novel

What's incredible about Middlemarch, George Eliot's masterwork, is how engrossing it is. I mean, this is a novel that deals with issues of art, education reform, scholarly research, medical science and provincial British politics.... CritiqueQuotesTextBuy

 
 
The Trumpet-Major The
by Thomas Hardy, England
Novel
1880
 
Ben-Hur
by Lew Wallace, United States
Novel
1881
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The Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain, United States
Novel

It's easy to overlook Mark Twain's bite in The Prince and the Pauper. The social criticism is not as sharp as in some of his later novels, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1883
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Treasure Island
Novel

No one needs to be told what Treasure Island is about. Robert Louis Stevenson's novel has defined the pirate story, not to mention the treasure-hunting story, the mutiny-on-the-seas story—and.... CritiqueQuotesTextAt the moviesBuy

1885
 
Marius the Epicurean
by Walter Pater, England
Novel
1886
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Kidnapped
Novel

In the article on John Buchan, I called his novels seminal thrillers surpassed by the later best-selling works of intrigue for which they showed the way. Stevenson's Kidnapped takes us back yet another generation.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1888
 
Under the Yoke
by Ivan Bazov, Bulgaria
Novel
1891
 
The Fleeing Mamluk
by Jurji Zaydan, Lebanon
Novel
1892
 
The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender
by Jurji Zaydan, Lebanon
Novel
1895
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The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane, United States
Novel

It's instructive how much of our literature has to do with warfare. From ancient works like the Iliad, through the epics of medieval slaughter and Shakespeare's historical dramas, to modern novels—bloody conflict has.... CritiqueQuotesTextAt the moviesBuy

1895–1896
 
Quo Vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland
Novel
1895–1913
 
Sandokan
by Emilio Salgaari, Italy
Novel
1897
 
Pharoah
by Bolesław Prus, Poland
Novel
1899
 
Virgin of Quraish
by Jurji Zaydan, Lebanon
Novel
1901
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Buddenbrooks
by Thomas Mann, Germany
Novel

If we have to pick one aspect that might make Buddenbrooks the first important novel of the twentieth century, it could be its moral ambiguity. The story of the Buddenbrook family is told over four generations.... CritiqueQuotesTranslationsBuy

1900–1901
 
The Fall of the King
by Johannes V. Jensen, Denmark
Novel in three parts, including The Death of Spring, The Great Summer, and Winter
1905
 
The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy, England
Novel
1910
 
Gora
by Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal
Novel
1911
 
The Corn King and the Spring Queen
by NaomiMitchison, Scotland
Novel
1919
 
The Curse of Capistrano
by Johnston McCulley, United States
Novel, also known as The Mark of Zorro
1921
 
Scaramouche
by Rafael Sabatini, Italy
Novel
1922
 
Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini, Italy
Novel
1925
 
Jud Süß
by Lion Feuchtwanger, Germany
Novel
1927
 
The Devil at the Long Point
by Riccardo Bacchelli, Italy
Novel
 
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather, United States
Novel

Death Comes for the Archbishop is often considered Willa Cather's masterpiece and is on several lists as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century—which may be surprising if you read it alongside other.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

 
 
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder, United States
Novel
1929–1943
 
Peter the Great
by Alexy Tolstoy, Russia
Novel
1930–1943
 
The Man Without Qualities
by Robert Musil, Austria
Novel
1931
 
The Conqueror
by Georgette Heyer, England
Novel
 
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The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck, United States
Novel

Pearl S. Buck has sometimes been accused of stereotyping the Chinese peasants as noble, simple creatures. But this was hardly the reaction to The Good Earth in the early 1930s when it became a sensation in the West and.... CritiqueQuotesAt the moviesBuy

1934
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I, Claudius
by Robert Graves, England
Novel

Some writers are not really good novelists—don't seem to have the artistic talents to shape words, sentences and paragraphs into conventional novelistic form—and yet can recognize a great story and marshal the.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

1936
 
Jamaica Inn
by Daphne du Maurier, England
Novel
 
 
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner, United States
Novel
 
 
Gone With the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell, United States
Novel
1936–1938
 
The Wind Has Risen
by Tatsuo Hori, Japan
Novel
1938
 
Count Belisarius
by Robert Graves, England
Novel
1938–1940
 
The Mill on the Po
by Riccardo Bacchelli, Italy
Novel
1941
 
Owen Glendower
by John Cowper Powys, England
Novel
 
 
Ride This Night
by Vilhelm Moberg, Sweden
Novel
1944
 
Death Comes as the End
by Agatha Christie, England
Novel
1946
 
King Jesus
by Robert Graves, England
Novel
 
 
Return to Ithaca
by Eyvind Johnson, Sweden
Novel
 
 
Bridge on the Drina
by Ivo Andrić, Yugoslavia
Novel
1949
 
The Kingdom of This World
by AlejoCarpentier, Cuba
Novel, originally El Reino de Este Mundo
 
 
The Emigrants
by Vilhelm Moberg, Sweden
Novel
1950
 
Power Without Glory
by Frank Hardy, England
Novel
 
 
Barabbas
by Pär Lagerkvist, Sweden
Novel
1951
 
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar, Belgium
Novel, originally Mémoires d'Hadrien
 
 
Porius
by John Cowper Powys, England
Novel
 
 
Spartacus
by Howard Fast, United States
Novel
1955
 
The Inheritors
by William Golding, England
Novel
 
 
Raquel: The Jewess of Toledo
by Lion Feuchtwanger, Germany
Novel
 
 
Metello
by Vasco Pratolini, Italy
Novel
1956
 
Palace Walk
by Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt
Novel
1957
 
Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak, Russia
Novel
1958
 
The Leopard
by Giusseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Italy
Novel, originally Il Gattopardo
 
 
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe, Nigeria
Novel
1960
 
City of My Dreams
by Pers Ansers Fogelström, Sweden
Novel
1962
 
The Death of Artemio Cruz
by Carlos Fuentes, Mexico
Novel
1963
 
The Heritage of the Prioress
by Carlo Alianello, Italy
Novel
1964
 
Time of Parting
by Anton Donchev, Bulgaria
Novel
 
 
The Good Hope
by William Heinesen, Faroe Islands
Novel
 
 
The Spire
by William Golding, England
Novel
 
 
The Lightning of August
by Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Mexico
Novel
 
 
Arrow of God
by Chinua Achebe, Nigeria
Novel
1966
 
Silence
by Shūsaku Endō, Japan
Novel
1967
 
Picnic at Hanging Rock
by Joan Lindsay, Australia
Novel
 
 
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia
Novel, originally Cien años de soledad
 
 
The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William Styron, United States
Novel
1968
 
True Grit
by Charles Portis, United States
Novel
1969
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The French Lieutenant's Woman
by John Fowles, England
Novel

Sometimes it seems the English-speaking world spent the entire twentieth century trying to shake off the repressions of the Victorian era. The rebellious 1960s, for example, may have prided themselves on rejecting.... CritiqueQuotesAt the moviesBuy

 
 
Strumpet City
by James Plunkett, Ireland
Novel
1969–1999
 
Master and Commander
by Patrick O'Brian, England
Novel
1970
 
Troubles
by J.G. Farrell, England
Novel
1971
 
The Scorpion God
by William Golding, England
Novel
 
 
The Egyptian
by Mika Waltari, Finland
Novel
 
 
August 1914
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russia
Novel
1972
 
Augustus
by John Williams, United States
Novel
1973
 
The Siege of Krishnapur
by J.G. Farrell, England
Novel
 
 
Burr
by Gore Vidal, United States
Novel
1974
 
I, the Supreme
by Augusto Roa Bastos, Paraguay
Novel
 
 
The Killer Angels
by Michael Shaara, United States
Novel
1975
 
Shōgun
by James Clavell, Australia
Novel
 
 
The Autumn of the Patriarch
by Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia
Novel
 
 
Terra Nostra
by Carlos Fuentes, Mexico
Novel
 
 
Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow, United States
Novel
1976
 
Roots
by Alex Haley, United States
Novel
1977
 
The Thorn Birds
by Colleen McCullough, Australia
Novel
1978
 
The Far Pavilions
by M.M. Kaye, England
Novel
1980
 
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco, Italy
Novel, originally Il nome della rosa
 
 
The Clan of the Cave Bear
by Jean M. Auel, United States
Novel
1981
 
Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie, India
Novel
 
 
The War of the End of the World
by Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru
Novel, originally La guerra del fin del mundo
 
 
Sharpe's Eagle
by Bernard Cornwell, United States
Novel
1982
 
Schindler's Ark
by Thomas Keneally, Australia
Novel, also known as Schindler's List
 
 
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende, Chile
Novel, originallyLa casa de los espíritus
 
 
An Ice-Cream War
by William Boyd, Scotland
Novel
 
 
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker, United States
Novel
1984
 
The Evil Coming North
by Fulvio Tomizza, Italy
Novel
1985
 
The Black Robe
by Brian Moore, Canada
Novel
1985
 
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Suskind, Germany
Novel, originally Das Parfum
 
 
The Old Gringo
by Carlos Fuentes, Mexico
Novel
 
 
Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry, United States
Novel
1987
 
In the Skin of a Lion
by Michael Ondaatje, Canada
Novel
 
 
News From the Empire
by Fernando del Paso, Mexico
Novel
 
 
Beloved
by Toni Morrison, United States
Novel
1988
 
Oscar and Lucinda
by Peter Carey, Australia
Novel
1989
 
The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett, England
Novel
 
 
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro, England
Novel
1990
 
The Silent Duchess
by Dacia Maraini , Italy
Novel
 
 
The Chimera
by Sebastiano Vassalli, Italy
Novel
1991
 
Cloudstreet
by Tim Winton, Australia
Novel
 
missing graphic
Regeneration
by Pat Barker, England
Novel

It may seem odd an acclaimed series of novels near the end of the twentieth century should feature characters from the period of the First World War. Or that issues from that war time should continue to resonate with.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

 
 
Outlander
by Diana Gabaldon, United States
Novel
1992
 
The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje, Canada
Novel
1993
 
A Dead Man in Deptford
by Anthony Burgess, England
Novel
 
 
Birdsong
by Sebastian Faulks, England
Novel
1995
 
The Blue Flower
by Penelope Fitzgerald, England
Novel
 
 
The Preston Brewer
by Andrea Camilleri, Italy
Novel
1996
missing graphic
Alias Grace
by Margaret Atwood, Canada
Novel

Alias Grace may be Margaret Atwood's best novel. It may not be her most popular (guessing that's The Handmaid's Tale). Nor her most complex or elaborate (probably The Blind Assassin). Nor her most impressive.... CritiqueQuotesAt the moviesBuy

1997
 
The God of Small Things
by ArundhatiRoy, India
Novel
 
 
Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier, United States
Novel
 
 
The Memoirs of Cleopatra
by Margaret George, United States
Novel
 
 
Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden, United States
Novel
 
 
Mason and Dixon
by Thomas Pynchon, United States
Novel
 
 
The Red Tent
by Anita Diamant, United States
Novel
1998
 
Colony of Unrequited Dreams
by Wayne Johnston, Canada
Novel
 
 
Master Georgie
by Beryl Bainbridge, England
Novel
 
 
The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver, United States
Novel
 
 
My Name Is Red
by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey
Novel, originally Benim Adim Kirmizi
1999
 
Girl With a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier, England
Novel
 
 
Years With Laura Diaz
by Carlos Fuentes, Mexico
Novel
2000
 
True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey, Australia
Novel
 
missing graphic
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood, Canada
Novel

Let's see. Margaret Atwood writes her prize-winning novel The Blind Assassin about an elderly woman writing her memoirs about her sisters, one of whom has written a novel called The Blind Assassin, which recounts her trysts.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

2001
missing graphic
Atonement
by Ian McEwan, England
Novel

It's hard not to think "classic" as you're reading Atonement. Especially in the first half with its scenes of country estate life, reminiscent of Jane Austen or the Brontë novels, as experienced through the perspective of.... CritiqueQuotesAt the moviesBuy

 
 
The Other Boleyn Girl
by Philippa Gregory, England
Novel
2002
 
The Last Crossing
by Guy Vanderhaege, Canada
Novel
 
 
The Last Legion
by Valerio Manfredi, Italy
Novel
 
 
Mary, called Magdalene
by Margaret George, United States
Novel
 
 
Twentieth Wife
by Indu Sundaresan, United States
Novel
 
 
Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters, Wales
Novel
2003
 
Ther Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini, United States
Novel
 
 
Property
by Valerie Martin, United States
Novel
2004
 
The Master
by Colm Tóibín, Ireland
Novel
 
 
The News From Paraguay
by Lily Tuck, United States
Novel
2005
 
March
by Geraldine Brooks, Australia
Novel
 
 
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak, Australia
Novel
 
missing graphic
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden, Canada
Novel

Joseph Boyden's debut novel, Three Day Road, was a revelation for many when it was published to acclaim in 2005. It was a revelation in the first place, of course, for depicting in such exacting and grisly detail the story.... CritiqueQuotesBuy

 
 
Measuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann, Germany
Novel
 
 
A Long Long Way
by Sebastian Barry , Ireland
Novel
 
 
The March
by E.L. Doctorow, United States
Novel
 
 
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See, United States
Novel
 
 
The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova, United States
Novel
2006
 
Inés of My Soul
by Isabel Allende, Chile
Novel
 
 
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
by John Boyne, Ireland
Novel
 
 
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigeria
Novel
 
 
Against the Day
by Thomas Pynchon, United States
Novel
 
 
The Night Watch
by Sarah Waters, Wales
Novel
2006–2015
 
Cicero Trilogy
by Robert Harris, England
Novel
2007
 
The Book of Negroes
by Lawrence Hill, Canada
Novel, also known as Someone Knows My Name
 
 
A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini, United States
Novel
2009
 
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel, England
Novel
 
 
Brooklyn
by Colm Tóibín, Ireland
Novel
 
 
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See, United States
Novel
2010
 
The Long Song
by Andrea Levyl, England
Novel
2011
 
The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt, Canada
Novel
 
 
Half-Blood Blues
by Esi Edugyan, Canada
Novel
 
 
My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante, Italy
Novel, originally L'amica geniale
 
 
The Buddha in the Attic
by Julie Otsuka, United States
Novel
2012
 
Arthur & George
by Julian Barnes, England
Novel
 
 
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel, England
Novel
 
 
The Twelve Rooms of the Nile
by Enid Shomer, United States
Novel
2013
 
The Orenda
by Joseph Boyden, Canada
Novel
 
 
The Luminaries
by Eleanor Catton, New Zealand
Novel
2014
 
The Books of Jacob
by Olga Tokarczuk, Poland
Novel
 
 
All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr, United States
Novel
2015
 
The Nightingale
by Kristin Hannah, United States
Novel
 
 
The Sympathizer
by Viet Than Nguyen, United States
Novel
2016
 
Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry, Ireland
Novel
 
 
Home Going
by Yaa Gyasi, United States
Novel
 
 
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead, United States
Novel
2017
 
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee, United States
Novel
 
 
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders, United States
Novel