| Year | Book | Author |
| 1948 | Tales of the South Pacific | James Michener |
| 1949 | Guard of Honor | James Cozzens |
| 1950 | The Way West | A.B. Guthrie, Jr. |
| 1951 | The Town | Conrad Richter |
| 1952 | The Caine Mutiny | Herman Wouk |
| 1953 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway |
| 1954 | No award given | |
| 1955 | A Fable | William Faulkner |
| 1956 | Andersonville | MacKinlay Kantor |
| 1957 | No award given | |
| 1958 | A Death in the Family | James Agee |
| 1959 | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters | Robert Lewis Taylor |
| 1960 | Advise and Consent | Allen Drury |
| 1961 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| 1962 | The Edge of Sadness | Edwin O’Connor |
| 1963 | The Reivers | William Faulkner |
| 1964 | No award given | |
| 1965 | The Keepers of the House | Shirley Ann Grau |
| 1966 | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter | Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | The Fixer | Bernard Malamud |
| 1968 | The Confessions of Nat Turner | William Styron |
| 1969 | House Made of Dawn | Scott Momaday |
| 1970 | The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford | Jean Stafford |
| 1971 | No award given | |
| 1972 | Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner |
| 1973 | The Optimist’s Daughter | Eudora Welty |
| 1974 | No award given | |
| 1975 | The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara |
| 1976 | Humboldt’s Gift | Saul Bellow |
| 1977 | No award given | |
| 1978 | Elbow Room | James Alan McPherson |
| 1979 | The Stories of John Cheever | John Cheever |
| 1980 | The Executioner’s Song | Norman Mailer |
| 1981 | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole |
| 1982 | Rabbit Is Rich | John Updike |
| 1983 | The Color Purple | Alice Walker |
| 1984 | Ironweed | William Kennedy |
| 1985 | Foreign Affairs | Alison Lurie |
| 1986 | Lonesome Dove | Larry McMurty |
| 1987 | A Summons to Memphis | Peter Taylor |
| 1988 | Beloved | Toni Morrison |
| 1989 | Breathing Lessons | Anne Tyler |
| 1990 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love | Oscar Hijuelos |
| 1991 | Rabbit At Rest | John Updike |
| 1992 | A Thousand Acres | Jane Smiley |
| 1993 | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain | Robert Olen Butler |
| 1994 | The Shipping News | Annie Proulx |
| 1995 | The Stone Diaries | Carol Shields |
| 1996 | Independence Day | Richard Ford |
| 1997 | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer | Steven Milhauser |
| 1998 | American Pastoral | Philip Roth |
| 1999 | The Hours | Michael Cunningham |
| 2000 | Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri |
| 2001 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon |
| 2002 | Empire Falls | Richard Russo |
| 2003 | Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides |
| 2004 | The Known World | Edward P. Jones |
| 2005 | Gilead | Marilynne Robinson |
| 2006 | March | Geraldine Brooks |
| 2007 | The Road | Cormac McCarthy |
| 2008 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Diaz |
| 2009 | Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout |
| 2010 | The Tinkers | Paul Harding |
| 2011 | A Visit from the Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan |
| 2012 | No award given | |
| 2013 | The Orphan Master’s Son | Adam Johnson |
| 2014 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt |
| 2015 | All the Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr |
| 2016 | The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen |
| 2017 | The Underground Railroad | Colson Whitehead |
| 2018 | Less | Andrew Sean Greer |
| 2019 | The Overstory | Richard Powers |
| 2020 | The Nickel Boys | Colson Whitehead |
| 2021 | The Nightwatchman | |
| 2022 | The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family | |
| 2023 | Trust Demon Copperhead | Herman Diaz Barbara Kingslover |
PULITZER SCHMULITZER! 