2000
Being Dead
by Jim Crace

1999
Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem

1998
The Love of a Good Woman
by Alice Munro

1997
The Blue Flower
by Penelope Fitzgerald

1996
Woman in Their Beds
by Gina Berriault

1995
Mrs. Ted Bliss
by Stanley Elkin

1994
The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields

1993
A Lesson Before Dying
by Ernest J. Gaines

1992
All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy

1991
A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley

1990
Rabbit at Rest
by John Updike

1989
Billy Bathgate
by E. L. Doctorow

1988
The Middleman and Other Stories
by Bharati Mukherjee

1987
The Counterlife
by Phillip Roth

1986
Kate Vaiden
by Reynolds Price

1985
The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler

1984
Love Medicine
by Louise Erdrich

1983
Ironweed
by William Kennedy

1982
George Mills
by Stanley Elkin

1981
Rabbit Is Rich
by John Updike