The Prizewinners 2013/2014

With last month’s awarding of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2013/2014 literary award season is now over, which gives us the opportunity to update our list of prizewinners. Literary prizes are, of course, deeply arbitrary in many ways; such is the nature of keeping score in a creative field. Nonetheless, our prizewinners post is compiled in the same spirit that one might tally up Cy Young Awards and MVPs to determine if a baseball player should be considered for the Hall of Fame. These awards nudge an author towards the “canon” and help secure them places on literature class reading lists for decades to come.

2013/14 was a suprisingly diverse year when it comes to literary awards, with no single novel winning multiple awards and very little crossover on the shortlists. Only one book is climbing the ranks this year. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer and was on the National Book Critics Circle shortlist.

Next year, we will need to make some changes to our methodology. When compiling this list, I wanted to include both American books and British books, as well as the English-language books from other countries that are eligible to win some of these awards. I started with the National Book Award and the Pulitzer from the American side and the Booker and Costa (formerly the Whitbread) from the British side. Because I wanted the British books to “compete” with the American books, I also looked at a couple of awards that recognize books from both sides of the ocean, the National Book Critics Circle Awards and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The IMPAC is probably the weakest of all these, but since it is both more international and more populist than the other awards, I thought it added something. However, now that the Booker Prize will be open to English-language books from all over the world, including the U.S., the panel of awards is now lopsided in favor of the U.S. Is there another British-only award that we can use to replace the Booker next year?

I looked at these six awards from 1995 to the present, awarding three points for winning an award and two points for an appearance on a shortlist or as a finalist. Here’s the key that goes with the list: B=Booker Prize, C=National Book Critics Circle Award, I=International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, N=National Book Award, P=Pulitzer Prize, W=Costa Book Award (formerly the Whitbread) bold=winner, red=New to the list or moved up* the list since last year’s “Prizewinners” post

*Note that the IMPAC considers books a year after the other awards do, and so this year’s IMPAC shortlist nods were added to point totals from last year.

• 11, 2003, The Known World by Edward P. Jones – C, I, N, P
• 9, 2001, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – C, I, N, P
• 8, 2010, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – C, I, P
• 8, 2009, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – B, C, W
• 8, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz – C, I, P
• 8, 1997, Underworld by Don DeLillo – C, I, N, P
• 7, 2005, The March by E.L. Doctorow – C, N, P
• 7, 2004, Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – B, C, W
• 7, 2002, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – I, N, P
• 7, 2001, Atonement by Ian McEwan – B, C, W
• 7, 1998, The Hours by Michael Cunningham – C, I, P
• 7, 1997, Last Orders by Graham Swift – B, I, W
• 7, 1997, Quarantine by Jim Crace – B, I, W
• >6, 2012, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel – B, W
• 6, 2009, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – N, I
• 6, 2009, Home by Marilynn Robinson – C, N, I
• 6, 2005, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – B, C
• 6, 2004, Gilead by Marilynn Robinson – C, P
• 5, 2013, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – P, C
• 5, 2012, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain – C, N
• 5, 2012, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – C, P
• 5, 2011, Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman – C, N
• 5, 2011, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes – B, W<
• 5, 2009, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín – W, I
• 5, 2008, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – B, W
• 5, 2008, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout – C, P
• 5, 2007, Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson – N, P
• 5, 2006, The Road by Cormac McCarthy – C, P
• 5, 2006, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers – N, P
• 5, 2005, Europe Central by William T. Vollmann – C, N
• 5, 2005, The Accidental by Ali Smith – B, W
• 5, 2004, The Master by Colm Tóibín – B, I
• 5, 2003, The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard – I, N
• 5, 2001, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey – B, I
• 5, 2000, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – C, P
• 5, 2000, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood – B, I
• 5, 1999, Waiting by Ha Jin – N, P
• 5, 1999, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee – B, C
• 5, 1999, Being Dead by Jim Crace – C, W
• 5, 1998, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott – I, N
• 5, 1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth – C, P
• 5, 1996, Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge – B, W
• 5, 1996, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser – N, P
• 5, 1995, The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie – B, W
• 5, 1995, The Ghost Road by Pat Barker – B, W
• 5, 1995, Independence Day by Richard Ford – C, P
• 5, 1995, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth – N, P