The National Book Awards are presented each year to American authors for work in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature. Listed below are previous ten years' winners in the fiction category.
1. 2008 - 'Shadow Country' by Peter Matthiessen
© Random House
Originally published as three books - Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone - Shadow Country tells the story of Florida Everglades outlaw sugar planter, Edgar J. Watson.
2. 2007 - 'Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson
© Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Vietnam war novel spanning 1963-1970, with a large international cast of characters - extraordinary in its scope and execution.
3. 2006 - 'The Echo Maker' by Richard Powers
© Picador
An accident leaves 27 year-old Mark Schluter with a neurological disorder that will change his life forever.
4. 2005 - 'Europe Central' by William T. Vollman
© Viking Penguin
William Vollman composites 37 short pieces of historical fiction in his novel that examines the Central Europe superpowers of Germany and Russia during the turbulent mid-20th Century.
5. 2004 - 'The News from Paraguay' by Lily Tuck
© HarperCollins
Nineteenth century Paraguay through the eyes of the country's dictator's Irish courtesan.
6. 2003 - 'The Great Fire' by Shirley Hazzard
© Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Set after World War II, The Great Fire tells the story of one man and one woman attempting to reinvent their lives amidst the post-war rubble.
7. 2002 - 'Three Junes' by Julia Glass
© Random House
Glass relates the tale of a Scottish family by drawing the reader into three vital months of June over ten years.
8. 2001 - 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen
© St. Martin's Press
Enid, after nearly fifty years as wife and mother, attempts to bring her decaying family together for one last Christmas in this modern portrait of the family in decline.
9. 2000 - 'In America' by Susan Sontag
© Picador
Sontag deftly places the reader in 19th century California where a Polish actress and her comrades fail to found their utopian commune, but succeed at so much more.
10. 1999 - 'Waiting' by Ha Jin
© Knopf
Chinese Doctor Lin Kong's love for two women contrasts ancient China with the China of the Cultural Revolution, while exploring the universal struggle of the individual with society and his own heart.
