Fond Books
Archive Collection

Best Books That Never Won a Prize

1905–2022

Prize committees miss great books all the time. This list collects the finest novels, stories, and works of nonfiction that never won a major literary award, from Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway to The Catcher in the Rye, and tells the story of what beat them.

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Year Title & Author Historical Context
2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The 2022 National Book Award for fiction went to Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch, and the 2023 Pulitzer was shared by Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copp...
2021 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir The novel was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel but lost to Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace at the 2022 ceremony. Weir's book...
2018 Educated by Tara Westover The 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction went to Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl, and Westover's memoir was a National Book Critics Circle finalist ...
2018 Circe by Madeline Miller The novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction but lost to Tayari Jones's An American Marriage. Its wins came from readers' honor...
2018 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens The 2018 National Book Award for fiction went to Sigrid Nunez's The Friend, and the Pulitzer that year went to Richard Powers's The Overstory. Owen...
2017 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee The novel was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for fiction, which went to Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing. Lee spent nearly three dec...
2016 A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles The 2016 National Book Award for fiction went to Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which also won the Pulitzer Prize the following year....
2012 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn The novel was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel but lost to Dennis Lehane's Live by Night at the 2013 ceremony. Flynn's book nonetheless...
2011 The Martian by Andy Weir Weir first published the novel himself in 2011, and that original date left it outside Hugo Award eligibility by the time its 2014 commercial editi...
2006 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak The book received a Michael L. Printz Honor, but the 2007 Printz Award itself went to Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese. Zusak's...
2005 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but lost that year to John Banville's The Sea in what many critics called an upset victory over the ...
2004 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell The novel was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize but lost to Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. It won the British Book Award for literary ...
2003 The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger The novel was shortlisted for the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award but lost to China Miéville's Iron Council. Its wins came instead from readers' and re...
2003 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini The 2003 National Book Award for fiction went to Edward P. Jones's The Known World, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize the following year as w...
2000 House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski The 2000 National Book Award for fiction went to Susan Sontag's historical novel In America. Danielewski's radically experimental debut did win the...
1996 Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk The 1996 National Book Award went to Andrea Barrett's story collection Ship Fever, and the only honors Palahniuk's debut collected were the regiona...
1996 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace The 1996 National Book Award for fiction went to Andrea Barrett's story collection Ship Fever instead, beating out several more heavily hyped final...
1993 Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh The 1993 Booker Prize went to Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and Welsh's novel reportedly came off the Booker longlist after offending two ju...
1992 The Secret History by Donna Tartt The 1992 National Book Award for fiction went to Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, an entirely different work exploring the American West. T...
1990 The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien The 1991 Pulitzer for fiction went to John Updike's Rabbit at Rest, and the book was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, wh...
1986 It by Stephen King The book appeared a year before the Horror Writers Association established the Bram Stoker Award in 1987, so it was never eligible for the prize th...
1985 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy The 1986 Pulitzer for fiction went to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, a very different vision of the American West. McCarthy's novel sold poorly an...
1980 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson The novel won the PEN Hemingway Award for a distinguished first work of fiction, a debut specific honor rather than one of the major prizes tracked...
1979 Kindred by Octavia Butler The novel was not nominated for either the Hugo or Nebula Award in its year of publication, despite Butler's later recognition as one of the most i...
1979 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The 1980 Hugo Award for Best Novel went to Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise, an entirely different and far more solemn work of hard sci...
1977 The Shining by Stephen King The book predates the Bram Stoker Award, which the Horror Writers Association would not establish until a decade later in 1987. King's reputation a...
1976 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice The book predates the Bram Stoker Award, established in 1987, and the Horror Writers Association did not yet exist to recognize horror fiction as a...
1975 Salem's Lot by Stephen King The book predates the Bram Stoker Award, which the Horror Writers Association would not establish until 1987, more than a decade later. King's earl...
1974 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré The 1974 Booker Prize was shared that year between Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton's Holiday, two literary novels far f...
1973 The Princess Bride by William Goldman The 1973 National Book Award for fiction was shared by John Barth's Chimera and John Williams's Augustus, both literary novels far removed from Gol...
1973 Sula by Toni Morrison The 1973 National Book Award for fiction was shared that year between John Barth's Chimera and John Williams's Augustus, leaving Morrison's second ...
1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson The 1971 National Book Award for fiction went to Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet, a work of high literary seriousness far removed from Thompson'...
1970 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The 1970 National Book Award for fiction went to Joyce Carol Oates's them, a very different novel of urban working class Detroit. Morrison's own de...
1969 The Godfather by Mario Puzo No major literary prize recognized the novel, which critics of the era largely dismissed as commercial genre fiction rather than serious literature...
1969 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut The novel lost both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, a rare instance of a single book sw...
1967 The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton No young adult literature award yet existed to recognize the novel, since that category of prize would not be formalized for decades. Hinton publis...
1967 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov No Soviet prize could have honored a manuscript its author burned in fear and then secretly rewrote, and the novel did not appear in print, heavily...
1966 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon The 1967 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction both went to Bernard Malamud's The Fixer that year. Pynchon's own more ambitious novel ...
1965 Stoner by John Williams The 1965 National Book Award for fiction went to Saul Bellow's Herzog, and Williams's own novel Augustus later won the National Book Award in 1973,...
1964 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl The 1965 Newbery Medal went to Maia Wojciechowska's Shadow of a Bull, a solemn coming of age story worlds away from Dahl's anarchic invention. Dahl...
1963 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath No major literary prize recognized the novel on its initial British publication under a pseudonym in January 1963. Plath died by suicide only a mon...
1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn No Soviet literary prize would have honored a book so critical of the state, and Solzhenitsyn's later Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1970, r...
1962 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess No major British fiction prize existed in 1962, well before the Booker Prize began in 1969. Burgess wrote prolifically across dozens of novels but ...
1961 Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger The 1962 National Book Award for fiction went to Walker Percy's debut novel The Moviegoer, a considerable upset over several favored finalists incl...
1961 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The 1962 National Book Award for fiction went to Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, beating out Heller's novel along with several other heavily favored ...
1961 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates The 1962 National Book Award for fiction went to Walker Percy's debut novel The Moviegoer, an upset victory over several more established finalists...
1960 Rabbit, Run by John Updike The 1961 Pulitzer for fiction went to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird instead. Updike would eventually win two Pulitzers for later installments ...
1958 The Once and Future King by T. H. White No major British fiction prize existed in 1958, well before the Booker Prize began in 1969. White compiled the novel from four books written across...
1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote The 1959 National Book Award for fiction went to Bernard Malamud's story collection The Magic Barrel instead. Capote would not achieve his greatest...
1958 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe No major English language literary prize recognized the novel in 1958, an era when African writers had little access to the Western prize circuit a...
1957 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak Soviet authorities forced Pasternak to decline the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year under threat of exile, an author level honor that i...
1957 On the Road by Jack Kerouac The 1958 National Book Award for fiction went to John Cheever's The Wapshot Chronicle, a very different portrait of American family life. Kerouac s...
1956 Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin No major American literary prize recognized the novel in 1956, and Baldwin's own publisher reportedly urged him to burn the manuscript rather than ...
1955 The Quiet American by Graham Greene No major British fiction prize existed in 1955, well before the Booker Prize began in 1969. Greene was famously passed over for the Nobel Prize in ...
1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith The novel was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel but lost to Margaret Millar's psychological thriller Beast in View at the 1956 ceremony....
1955 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov American publishers rejected the manuscript and no prize committee touched it after its 1955 Paris publication. Nabokov never won the National Book...
1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury No science fiction prize recognized the novel in 1953, the very first year the Hugo Award existed, when it went instead to Alfred Bester's The Demo...
1953 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming No major thriller or mystery prize of note existed for the book in Britain in 1953. Fleming's Bond novels found their greatest fame only after the ...
1952 East of Eden by John Steinbeck The 1953 Pulitzer for fiction went to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea instead. Steinbeck had already won the Pulitzer for The Grapes of ...
1952 Charlotte's Web by E. B. White The 1953 Newbery Medal went instead to Ann Nolan Clark's Secret of the Andes, with Charlotte's Web receiving only a Newbery Honor, one rung below t...
1951 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger The 1951 National Book Award went to the Collected Stories of William Faulkner and Salinger won nothing at all. The novel sold tens of millions of ...
1949 Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell The 1950 Pulitzer for fiction went to A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s The Way West, a novel of the Oregon Trail entirely removed from Orwell's dystopian concer...
1948 I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith No major British fiction prize existed in 1948, well before the Booker Prize began in 1969. Smith was already known for her plays and would later w...
1945 Cannery Row by John Steinbeck The 1946 Pulitzer for fiction went to no book at all, one of several years the board withheld the prize entirely without public explanation. Steinb...
1945 Animal Farm by George Orwell No prize recognized the novella on its difficult wartime publication, since British publishers initially rejected it for fear of offending the Sovi...
1943 The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry No major literary prize recognized the novella when it first appeared in New York in 1943, published in French by an author living in wartime exile...
1942 The Stranger by Albert Camus No major French literary prize recognized the novel on its 1942 publication during the German occupation of France. Camus later won the Nobel Prize...
1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers The 1941 Pulitzer for fiction went to no book at all that year, after the board overruled its own jury's recommendation of Hemingway's For Whom the...
1940 Native Son by Richard Wright The 1941 Pulitzer for fiction went to no book at all, after the board rejected the jury's recommendation of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, an...
1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway The Pulitzer fiction jury recommended the novel for the 1941 prize, but the Pulitzer board overruled the jury and declined to give any award that y...
1939 The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West The 1940 Pulitzer for fiction went to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, an entirely different vision of Depression era America. West died in a ...
1939 And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie No mystery prize existed yet to honor the novel, since the Edgar Award would not launch until 1946. Christie's staggering commercial success across...
1939 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler The Edgar Award did not yet exist when the novel appeared in 1939, since the Mystery Writers of America would not establish the prize until 1946. C...
1937 The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien The book predates the Hugo Award, established in 1953, and the Newbery Medal's British counterpart the Carnegie Medal had only just begun the year ...
1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston The 1938 Pulitzer for fiction went to John P. Marquand's The Late George Apley, and contemporary Black critics including Richard Wright dismissed H...
1937 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck The 1938 Pulitzer for fiction went to John P. Marquand's The Late George Apley, a satire of Boston society. Steinbeck would win the Pulitzer three ...
1934 Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie No mystery prize existed yet to honor the novel, since the Edgar Award would not launch until 1946, more than a decade later. Christie went on to b...
1934 Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald The 1935 Pulitzer for fiction went to Josephine Winslow Johnson's Now in November, a spare Depression era farm novel. Tender Is the Night sold poor...
1932 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley No science fiction award yet existed, since the Hugo Award would not begin until 1953, more than two decades later. Huxley's vision of a pacified, ...
1930 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner The 1931 Pulitzer for fiction went to Margaret Ayer Barnes's Years of Grace, a now largely forgotten chronicle of Chicago society. Faulkner's forma...
1930 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett No mystery award existed yet to honor the novel, since the Edgar Award would not be established by the Mystery Writers of America until 1946. Hamme...
1929 Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe The 1930 Pulitzer for fiction went to Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy, leaving Wolfe's sprawling debut without a major prize. Wolfe died just eight ...
1929 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The 1930 Pulitzer for fiction went to Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy rather than to Faulkner's formally daring novel. Faulkner would eventually win...
1929 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway The 1930 Pulitzer for fiction went to Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy, a novel of Navajo life that has since faded from wide readership. Hemingway w...
1929 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque No German literary prize of the era would have honored a book the Nazi party considered a betrayal of national pride, and it appeared before any ma...
1926 Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne The book appeared four years before the Carnegie Medal existed and predates any major British children's book prize. Milne, already a successful pl...
1926 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway The 1927 Pulitzer for fiction went to Louis Bromfield's Early Autumn, a now largely forgotten novel of New England gentility. Hemingway would not w...
1925 The Trial by Franz Kafka No literary prize existed in the German speaking world capable of recognizing the book, which Kafka's friend Max Brod published against the author'...
1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The 1926 Pulitzer for fiction went to Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, which Lewis himself refused to accept in protest of the prize's earlier treatmen...
1925 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf No major prize recognised the novel in 1925, a year when the Pulitzer went to Edna Ferber for So Big. Woolf never won a major literary award, yet M...
1922 Ulysses by James Joyce United States customs officials banned the novel as obscene for over a decade, and no major prize committee of the era would touch a book that cour...
1920 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis The Pulitzer fiction jury actually recommended Main Street for the 1921 prize, but the Pulitzer board overturned that choice and gave the award to ...
1920 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald The 1921 Pulitzer for fiction went to Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, the first time a woman won the prize. Fitzgerald never won a Pulitzer f...
1919 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson The book appeared the year before the Pulitzer board's famous 1920 override of its own fiction jury, and it received no prize itself. Anderson's in...
1918 My Ántonia by Willa Cather The Pulitzer Prize for fiction had only just been established the same year and went instead to Ernest Poole's His Family. Cather later won the Pul...
1915 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka No literary prize existed in the German speaking world at the time capable of recognizing the novella, and Kafka published almost nothing under his...
1914 Dubliners by James Joyce The book appeared decades before the Booker Prize existed and long before any Irish literary prize could have honored it. Joyce struggled for nearl...
1911 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton The book appeared seven years before the Pulitzer Prize for fiction began in 1918. Wharton later won that prize for The Age of Innocence, but Ethan...
1911 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett The Newbery Medal did not yet exist when the novel appeared in 1911, and the Carnegie Medal was still decades away. Burnett had already found fame ...
1910 Howards End by E. M. Forster No British fiction prize of consequence existed in 1910, well before the Booker Prize began in 1969. Forster's reputation rested entirely on critic...
1908 Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery The book appeared fourteen years before the Newbery Medal began honoring children's literature in 1922, so it never had the chance to compete for i...
1908 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame The book predates both the Newbery Medal, established in 1922, and the Carnegie Medal, established in 1936, so no children's book prize could have ...
1906 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair No literary prize recognized the book in 1906, since the Pulitzer Prize for fiction did not exist until 1918. Its influence was legislative rather ...
1905 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton No American prize yet existed to honor novels when the book appeared in 1905, since the Pulitzer for fiction would not begin until 1918. Wharton la...