The Booker Prize

Financed by Booker McConnell, a multinational conglomerate company, and awarded annually for the best full length novel in the
British Commonwealth of Nations. Go to the Booker Prize site.

2009:  Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

The Nobel Prize for Literature

Established under the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel and awarded annually for an outstanding body of work in the field of literature. Save for the critical approval of posterity, the most distinguished award bestowed upon a
modern author of any nationality. Go to the Nobel Prize site.

2005: Harold Pinter, UK 

2006: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey

2007: Doris Lessing, UK

2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, France

2009:  Herta Müller, Germany

National Book Critics Circle Award

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, consists of nearly 700 active book reviewers, interested in communicating with one another about common concerns. The centerpiece of NBCC activities is the annual awards for the best book in five categories: fiction, general nonfiction, biography/autobiography, poetry, and criticism. Each year the organization salutes the most accomplished reviewer, from within the membership, with the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Go to the National Book Critics Circle site.

2008: 
Fiction: 2666, by Roberto Bolaño 
Nonfiction: The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins
Autobiography: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in
                             Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar

2002: 
Fiction: Atonement, Ian McEwan, 
Nonfiction: “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power, 
Biography: Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II, Janet Browne, 

2001:
Fiction: Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald 
Nonfiction: Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, by Nicholson Baker
Biography: Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson, by Adam Sisman

2000:
Fiction: Being Dead, by Jim Crace
Nonfiction: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, by Ted Conover
Biography: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, by Herbert P. Bix

1999:
Fiction: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Nonfiction: Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior by Jonathan Weiner
Biography: The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White Henry Wiencek

1998:
Fiction: The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
Nonfiction: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
Biography: A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

1997:
Fiction: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Nonfiction: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Biography: Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, James Tobin

1996:
Fiction: Women in Their Beds, Gina Berriault
Non-Fiction: Bad Land, Jonathan Raban
Biography: Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt

1995:
Fiction: Mrs. Ted Bliss, Stanley Elkin
Non-Fiction: A Civil Action, Jonathon Harr
Biography: Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, Robert Polito

1994:
Fiction: The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
Non-Fiction: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, Lynn H. Nicholas
Biography: Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore

1993:
Fiction: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
Non-Fiction: The Land Where the Blues Began, Alan Lomax
Biography: Genet, Edmund White

1992:
Fiction: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Non-Fiction: Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean
Biography: Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World, Carol Brightman

1991:
Fiction: A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
Non-Fiction: Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women, Susan Faludi
Biography: A True Story, Philip Roth

1990:
Fiction: Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
Non-Fiction: The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, Shelby Steele
Biography: Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II, Robert A. Caro

1989:
Fiction: Billy Bathgate, E.L. Doctorow
Non-Fiction: The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris
Biography: A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, Geoffrey C. Ward

1988:
Fiction: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee
Non-Fiction: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, Taylor Branch Biography: Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellman

1987:
Fiction: The Counterlife, Philip Roth
Non-Fiction: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
Biography: Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World, Donald R. Howard

1986:
Fiction: Kate Vaiden, Reynolds Price
Non-Fiction: War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, John W. Dower Biography: Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter, Theodore Rosengarten

1985:
Fiction: The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler
Non-Fiction: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, J. Anthony Lukas
Biography: Henry James: A Life, Leon Edel

1984:
Fiction: Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
Non-Fiction: Weapons and Hope, Freeman Dyson
Biography: Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859, Joseph Frank

1983:
Fiction: Ironweed, William Kennedy
Non-Fiction: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Seymour M. Hersch
Biography: Minor Characters, Joyce Johnson

1982:
Fiction: George Mills, Stanley Elkin
Non-Fiction: The Path of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro

1981:
Fiction: Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike
Non-Fiction: The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould