Award-Winning Black NovelsLike this list

14 items

• James

  a Novel

  Everett, Percival,

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  Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction, Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn centers on the story of the enslaved Jim. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, Jim's agency,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Invisible Man

  Ellison, Ralph

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  Ellison’s searing 1953 National Book Award-winning novel follows the nameless narrator from his teenage years in a small Southern town to his allegiance with a group called “the Brotherhood” that claims to be working to better conditions in Harlem.

• The Known World

  Jones, Edward P.

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  Set on a Virginia plantation, Jones’ 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel looks at slavery from an unusual viewpoint. Henry Townsend is a former slave who now owns his own land and slaves—but he is dying, and he worries what will happen to his holdings…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Good Lord Bird

  McBride, James, 1957-

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  As seen through the eyes of an orphaned young slave named Henry Shackleford, McBride recreates the story of abolitionist John Brown in his 2013 National Book Award-winning historical novel.

• Afterlives

  Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948-

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  A young man returns home years after being kidnapped to find his parents gone and his sister basically a slave in a multi-generational saga set during the colonization of east Africa that won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. (provided by Novelist)

• Beloved

  a Novel

  Morrison, Toni

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  Set in Cincinnati after the Civil War, Morrison’s powerful 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of a former slave whose home is haunted by the ghost of her dead daughter.

• Hell of a Book

  or the Altogether Factual, Wholly Bona Fide Story of a Big Dreams, Hard Luck, American-made Mad Kid

  Mott, Jason,

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  Mott’s 2021 National Book Award-winning novel follows the protagonist, a nameless Black author on his first book tour, and The Kid, a 10-year-old Black boy who mysteriously keeps showing up at the author’s events. Is The Kid real or a product of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Song of Solomon

  Morrison, Toni

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  Awarded the 1977 National Book Critics Circle Award, Song of Solomon follows the protagonist, Macon “Milkman” Dead III, a Black man living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood.

• The Women of Brewster Place

  Naylor, Gloria

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  Winner of the National Book Award for 1st Novel in 1983, Naylor’s compelling debut weaves together the stories of seven Black women living in Brewster Place, a housing project in an unidentified inner city.

• The Color Purple

  a Novel

  Walker, Alice, 1944-

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  Walker’s celebrated novel, which won both the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, follows the suffering and eventual triumph of Celie, a Black woman abused by her father and husband, who eventually finds courage and comfort through her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Salvage the Bones

  a Novel

  Ward, Jesmyn

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  Pregnant 14-year-old Esch Batiste helps her family, who live in extreme poverty in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, prepare their home for Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2011 National Book Award-winning Ward’s second novel.

• Sing, Unburied, Sing

  a Novel

  Ward, Jesmyn,

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  Ward’s third novel, winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction, follows the story of three generations of a Mississippi family: grandparents Pop and Mam; drug addict daughter Leonie, longing for her lover, who’s in prison; and Leonie’s…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Nickel Boys

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  Whitehead’s blistering novel, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, is the story of the Nickel Academy, a Florida reform school which committed racist and sometimes fatal crimes against the Black boys living there during the final years of Jim Crow.

• The Underground Railroad

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  When Caesar asks Cora to escape with him to the North via the Underground Railroad, their journey is continually fraught with danger in Whitehead’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.