2015 Award-worthy or Award-winning Books

  Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

ℹ️  Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature. (Goodreads)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (longlisted)
• 2015 National Book Critics Circle Awards (finalist)
• 2015 Shirley Jackson Award (finalist)
• 2016 Man Booker Prize (shortlisted)
• 2016 Crime Writers' Association Awards (shortlisted)
• 2016 Gordon Burn Prize (shortlisted)
• 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel (won)
• 2017 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize (longlisted)

The Green Road by Anne Enright

ℹ️ The novel concerns the lives of the Madigan family - four children and their mother Rosaleen. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Man Booker Prize (longlisted)
• 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (nominated)
• 2016 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award (won)
• 2017 International Dublin Literary Award (shortlisted)

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

ℹ️ The novel is set in Cork, Ireland, in the wake of economic downturn, and explores the meager circumstances and decisions of several characters who are on the fringe of society.  (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2016 Women's Prize for Fiction (won)
• 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize (won)

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

ℹ️ The novel is about the life of Teddy Todd (younger brother of Ursula Todd, the protagonist of the companion work, Life After Life). (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Costa Book Awards (won)

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

ℹ️ The novel is a "book about death and its grief-stricken consolations – love and art" through the story "of a grieving writer and father of two young boys, who is coming to terms with the death of his wife while writing a book about Ted Hughes". (Wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Goldsmiths Prize (shortlisted)
• 2015 Guardian First Book Award (shortlisted)
• 2016 Books Are My Bag Readers' Award: Fiction (won)
• 2016 Dylan Thomas Prize (won)
• 2016 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (won)
• 2017 Europese Literatuurprijs (won)

Fifteen Dogs: An Apologue by André Alexis

ℹ️ The novel tells the story of a group of 15 dogs, kennelled at a veterinary clinic in Toronto, who are suddenly gifted by the gods with human consciousness and language. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize (won)
• 2015 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (won)
• 2015 Toronto Book Awards (shortlisted)
• 2017 Canada Reads (won)

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

ℹ️ Set primarily in New York City, the story chronicles the lives of four friends as they grapple with substance abuse, sexual assault and depression. (Wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Kirkus Prize (won)
• 2015 Man Booker Prize (shortlisted)
• 2015 National Book Award (shortlisted)
• 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal Fiction (shortlisted)
• 2016 Women’s Prize for Fiction (shortlisted)
• 2017 International Dublin Literary Award (shortlisted)

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

ℹ️ The novel explores the dangerous intrigue that surrounds the powerful Corta dynasty, one of the five families who control industry on the Moon. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award (nominated)
• 2016 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards (won)

The Sellout  by Paul Beatty

ℹ️ The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and muses about the state of racial relations in the U.S. today. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction) (won)
• 2016 Booker Prize (won)
• 2024 #17 on The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy

ℹ️ The novel follows a protagonist, "U.", an employee of "the Company" which is a consulting firm. U is a former anthropologist who now applies his skills to cases handled by the company. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Man Booker Prize (shortlist)

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

ℹ️ The story tells of the desperate efforts to preserve Homo sapiens in the wake of apocalyptic events on Earth after the unexplained disintegration of the Moon and the remaking of human society as a space-based civilization after a severe genetic bottleneck. (Wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2016 Prometheus Award for Best Novel (won)
• 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel (nominated)

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

ℹ️ The story follows a thieving crew and is primarily set in the city of Ketterdam, which is loosely inspired by Dutch Republic–era Amsterdam. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction (nominated)
• 2016 Dragon Awards: Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel (nominated)
• 2016 El Premio El Templo de las Mil Puertas (won)
• 2017 Missouri Gateway Readers Award (nominated)
• 2017 Hea Noorteraamat: Best Youth Books (won)
• 2018 German Fantasy Awards: Best International Novel (won)
• 2018 Evergreen Teen Book Award (nominated)
• 2018 Rhode Island Teen Book Award (nominated)

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

ℹ️ Tyler's story encompasses three generations of the Whitshank family, wandering back and forth over 7 decades of the 20th century. As in many of her previous novels, Tyler explores the resentments that develop and fester between siblings, spouses, and in parent-child connections—as well as their affectionate bonds. (Wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (shortlisted)
• 2015 Man Booker Prize (shortlisted)

A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk

ℹ️ The story takes place in Istanbul, documenting the changes that the city underwent from 1969 to 2012. The main character is Mevlut, who originates from central Anatolia and arrives as a 12-year-old boy; the course of the novel tracks his adolescence and adulthood. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2016 International Booker Prize (shortlisted)
• 2017 International Dublin Literary Award (shortlisted)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

ℹ️ The story depicts the anonymous narrator, a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army, who stays embedded in a South Vietnamese community in exile in the United States. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 The Center for Fiction: First Novel Prize (won)
• 2016 American Booksellers Association: Indies Choice Book Awards (honored)
• 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medals (won)
• 2016 Asian Pacific American Librarians Association: Adult Fiction (won)
• 2016 California Book Awards: Gold Medal in First Fiction (won)
• 2016 Edgar Awards: Best First Novel (won)
• 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize: Fiction (won)
• 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize: Mystery/Thriller (finalist)
• 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (finalist)
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize: Fiction (won)
• 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize (finalist)
• 2017 Association for Asian American Studies: Book Awards for Creative Writing: Prose (won)
• 2017 Deutscher Krimi Preis: International (runner-up)
• 2017 International Dublin Literary Award (finalist)
• 2017 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (won)

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

ℹ️ The novel focuses on the experiences of migrant workers in Britain. (wikipedia)

🏆 Awards

• 2015 Man Booker Prize (shortlisted)
• 2017 European Union Prize for Literature (won)