Looking for something to read during the holidays? Here are some of the biggest literary prize winners of the past year.

(You can find even more literary Prize winners from this past year here. Plus, if you have young readers at home, you might like to browse our collection of prize-winning children’s and YA books here.)

Read if you enjoy challenging, imaginative fiction…

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

This confronting historical novel about slavery has a supernatural twist: in this novel the ‘Underground Railroad’ is not a metaphor, but real. It’s a secret network of tracks and tunnels built beneath the Southern soil, and it can lead to other worlds. In this astonishingly inventive work, Colson Whitehead skilfully recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era as he tracks one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage. (For context on what the real Underground Railroad entailed, please see here.)

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction 2016

Read if you enjoy the novels of Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout…

Music and Freedom by Zoë Morrison

Set over a period of 70 years, Music and Freedom is a profound and moving portrait of one woman’s life, ranging from rural Australia in the 1930s to England in the modern day. Zoë Morrison digs deeply into the marriage, relationships and ambitions of its central protagonist, Alice. The novel examines what it means to suffer regret and heartbreak, to make difficult choices and live with the consequences, and to find hope and passion in your darkest hour.

Winner of the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2016

Read if you enjoy legal thrillers about historical mysteries…

East West Street by Philippe Sands

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. He set out on a quest that would take him halfway around the world, as he delved into the origins of international law as well as pursued his own secret family history. East West Street is part historical detective story, part family history, and part legal thriller.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction 2016

Read if you enjoy novels about ideas…

Black Rock White City by A.S. Patrić

Black Rock White City is a moving story about the damages of war, the limits of choice and the hope of love. During a hot Melbourne summer Jovan’s cleaning work at a bayside hospital is disrupted by acts of graffiti and violence. As Jovan cleans up the mysterious words, it dislodges the poetry of his past; fleeing Sarajevo with his wife, Suzanna, and the death of their children.

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2016

Read if you enjoy Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift…

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Sellout is a laugh-out-loud, caustic satire about a young man’s isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court. With this work, Paul Beatty challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement and even the holy grail of racial equality – the black Chinese restaurant.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2016

Read if you enjoy books that refuse to be ‘categorised’…

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family – Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir. It is a work of ‘autotheory’ offering fresh, fierce and timely thinking about desire, identity and the limitations and possibilities of love and language.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism 2016

Read if you enjoy history books that challenge the official narratives…

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

In this compelling non-fiction work, Bruce Pascoe argues against the ‘hunter, gatherer’ label that so many Australians associate with the history of Aboriginal people. He draws on the work of Bill Gammage, R. Gerritsen and others, as well as his own research, and his findings make for a strongly persuasive case.

Winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Book of the Year 2016

Read if you enjoy gripping crime fiction…

Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic

Caleb Zelic, profoundly deaf since early childhood, has always lived on the outside – watching, picking up tell-tale signs people hide in a smile, a cough, a kiss. When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can’t do it alone…

Winner of three Davitt Awards (Adult Novel, Debut, Reader’s Choice) 2016 AND Winner of the Ned Kelly Award (Best First Fiction) 2016

Read if you enjoy politically-charged and blackly-comic fiction…

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

In The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen powerfully examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today. A gripping spy novel and an astute exploration of extreme politics, this is the story of ‘the captain’ – a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother; a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2016

Read if you enjoy Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale…

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

The Natural Way of Things is a starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control. 10 women are imprisoned on an isolated property in the middle of Australia, and forced into hard labour in scorching heat. Charlotte Wood unsparingly unpacks the dynamics between the women and their captives, as well as between the women themselves.

Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize

Read if you want to learn more about the Tiananmen Square protests…

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

In Canada in 1991, 10-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home: a young woman who has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests. Her name is Ai-Ming. As her relationship with Marie deepens, Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao’s ascent, to the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and the events leading to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989.

Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2016

Read if you’re interested in the power of communities to enact change…

Creating Cities by Marcus Westbury

In 2008, Marcus Westbury returned to his hometown of Newcastle, Australia and found more than 150 empty buildings lining its two main streets. Three years later, Lonely Planet named this same town one of the Top Ten cities to visit in the world. Creating Cities is about the unlikely events that took place during those three years.

Winner of the Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA) 2016

Read if you enjoy fiery Irish novelists…

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

Biting, moving and darkly funny, The Glorious Heresies explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland’s twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family. Set in Cork’s seedy underbelly, and rich in local dialect, it is the story of how one messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland’s post-crash society.

Winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016

Read if you enjoy complicated family dynamics…

Hope Farm by Peggy Frew

13-year-old Silver has spent her life being moved from commune to commune by her mother Ishtar, and this novel opens in 1985 as they arrive at their latest destination. Hope Farm is a commune located on a run-down property in Victoria. As Silver grows through her teen years, Peggy Frew unpacks the fractured relationship between mother and daughter, and manages to skilfully show both sides to their story.

Winner of the Barbara Jefferis Award 2016

Read if you enjoy trangressive, unsettling fiction…

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (transated by Deborah Smith)

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people but their bland lives are interrupted when, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, her decision is a shocking act of subversion and as the story progresses, her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms.

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016

Read if you’re a fan of visually striking prose…

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother’s sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness and in this moment of despair, they are visited by Crow. Antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter – Crow’s visit leads to surprising results. Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief – Max Porter’s debut is dazzling.

Winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2016