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. 2011 - 'Salvage the Bones' by Jesmyn Ward
© Bloomsbury
Jesmyn Ward's forboding tale of natural disaster takes its inpiration from Hurricane Katrina as it follows a Gulf Coast family through 12 days in preparation for the coming storm.
2. 2010 - 'Lord of Misrule' by Jaimy Gordon
© McPherson
Jaimy Gordon's is a novel of horseracing set in the gritty underbelly of West Virginia's Indian Mound Downs and is populated by characters with names like Two-Tie, Edicine Ed, and Kidstuff.
3. 2009 - 'Let the Great World Spin' by Colum McCann
© Random House
Colum McCann's novel is a portrait of New York and the people within, all of whom gather breathlessly beneath the Twin Towers in 1974 as an unknown tightrope walker defies the pull of the Earth.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 2004 - 'The News from Paraguay' by Lily Tuck
© HarperCollins
Nineteenth century Paraguay through the eyes of the country's dictator's Irish courtesan.
9. 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.
10. 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.
