The list at the end of this post is arbitrary. Necessarily so, because awards, by their nature, are arbitrary. Nonetheless, after a couple of weeks full of awards news, including the inaugural appearance of the Quills, I was curious to see if all these awards are really pointing us towards good books.
If we are dissatisfied with the Booker Prize or the National Book Award or the Pulitzer, the Quills, which casts the net very wide and relies on voting from the reading public, have been presented as a populist alternative. The results are less than satisfying. It is not news to anyone that the reading public likes Harry Potter and books by Sue Monk Kidd and Janet Evanovich. I hold nothing against those bestsellers, but naming them the best books of the year does little to satisfy one’s yearning to be introduced to the best, to have an encounter with a classic in our own time. We like those bestsellers because they entertain us, but while monetary success is the reward for those entertaining authors, awards have typically honored books with qualities that are more difficult to quantify. These award-winners are supposed to edify and challenge while still managing to entertain. But, as we saw with last year’s National Book Awards, readers are unsatisfied when recognition is reserved only for the obscure. We want to know our best authors even while they remain mysterious to us. So, pondering this, I wondered which books have been most recognized by book awards in recent years, and could those books also be fairly called the best books.
It turned out to be a challenge. 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 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. The glaring omission is the PEN/Faulkner, but it would have skewed everything too much in favor of the American books, so I left it out.
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=Whitbread Book Award, bold=winner
- 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, 1997, Underworld by Don DeLillio – C, I, 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, N, 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, 2004, Gilead by Marilynn Robinson – N, P
- 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
- 4, 2004, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – B, C
- 4, 2003, Brick Lane by Monica Ali – B, C
- 4, 2003, Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor – B, I
- 4, 2003, The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut – B, I
- 4, 2003, Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins – N, P
- 4, 2002, Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry – B, I
- 4, 2002, The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor – B, W
- 4, 2001, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – B, I
- 4, 2001, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – I, N
- 4, 2001, John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead – N, P
- 4, 2001, Oxygen by Andrew Miller – B, W
- 4, 2000, The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins – B, I
- 4, 2000, When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – B, W
- 4, 2000, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates – N, P
- 4, 1999, Our Fathers by Andrew O’Hagan – B, I
- 4, 1999, Headlong by Michael Frayn – B, W
- 4, 1999, The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin – B, I
- 4, 1997, Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid – C, I
- 4, 1997, Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty – B, W
- 4, 1997, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan – I, W
- 4, 1997, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick – I, N
- 4, 1996, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood – B, I
- 4, 1995, In Every Face I Meet by Justin Cartwright – B, W
I find the list to be fairly satisfying, especially at the top, though it does skew in favor of men. There are also a preponderance of “big name” literary authors on this list, but it begs the question: Does the fame come first or do the awards? I’d love to hear other opinions on this list, so please, share your comments.
See Also: Award Annals compiles similar lists (though much more comprehensive than this one.)
