Year-End Lists

Library Journal: Best Literary Fiction of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2012 • 2011]

• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Little Family
  Ishmael Beah
• The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
  Christopher Beha
• Transcendent Kingdom
  Yaa Gyasi
• Apeirogon
  Colum McCann
• Migrations
  Charlotte McConaghy
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• The New American
  Micheline Aharonian Marcom
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell

Chicago Public Library: Top 20 Books of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014]

• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• Caste

  The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• The City We Became
  N.K. Jemisin
• The Cold Millions
  Jess Walter
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• Finna
  Nate Marshall
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Hidden Valley Road

  Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• Interior Chinatown
  Charles Yu
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• Memorial Drive

  A Daughter's Memoir
  Natasha Trethewey
• Mexican Gothic
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• Transcendent Kingdom
  Yaa Gyasi
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• Vesper Flights
  Helen Macdonald
• Writers & Lovers
  Lily King

The Guardian: Best Fiction of 2020

[see also 2021 • 2017]

• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• The Pull of the Stars
  Emma Donoghue
• The Silence
  Don DeLillo
• Weather
  Jenny Offill
• Exit Management
  Naomi Booth
• Summerwater
  Sarah Moss
• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
  M. John Harrison
• Summer
  Ali Smith
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• This Mournable Body
  Tsitsi Dangarembga
• The Shadow King
  Maaza Mengiste
• Jack
  Marilynne Robinson
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• Utopia Avenue
  David Mitchell
• Mr Wilder and Me
  Jonathan Coe
• Rodham
  Curtis Sittenfeld
• Inside Story
  Martin Amis
• Mayflies
  Andrew O'Hagan
• Such a Fun Age
  Kiley Reid
• Exciting Times
  Naoise Dolan
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• The Young Team
  Graeme Armstrong
• Rainbow Milk
  Paul Mendez
• Burnt Sugar
  Avni Doshi
• Real Life
  Brandon Taylor
• The Liar's Dictionary
  Eley Williams
• The Lying Life of Adults
  Elena Ferrante
• Hurricane Season
  Fernanda Melchor
• The Discomfort of Evening
  Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
• Discomfort of Evening
  Daniel Kahneman
• Little Eyes
  Samanta Schweblin
• Benjamín Labatut
  When We Cease to Understand the World
• The Dominant Animal
  Kathryn Scanlan
• Modern Times
  Cathy Sweeney
• Reality and Other Stories
  John Lanchester
• The Voice in My Ear
  Frances Leviston
• Good Citizens Need Not Fear
  Maria Reva
• The Bass Rock
  Evie Wyld
• Piranesi
  Susanna Clarke

New York Public Library: Top 10 Books of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018]

• The City We Became
  N.K. Jemisin
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Hood Feminism

  Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
  Mikki Kendall
• Interior Chinatown
  Charles Yu
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
  V.E. Schwab
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• The Midnight Library
  Matt Haig
• The Sacrifice of Darkness
  Roxane Gay & Tracy Lynne Oliver
• The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
  Grady Hendrix
• Temporary
  Hilary Leichter

Lindsay Baker: The Best Books of the Year 2020 as published by BBC Culture

• A Promised Land
  Barack Obama
• The Best of Me
  David Sedaris
• Ready Player Two
  Ernest Cline
• Reality and Other Stories
  John Lanchester
• Transcendent Kingdom
  Yaa Gyasi
• Mediocre

  The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
  Ijeoma Oluo
• White Ivy
  Susie Yang
• Sweet Dreams

  The Story of the New Romantics
  Dylan Jones
• Dearly
  Margaret Atwood
• The New Wilderness
  Diane Cook
• This Mournable Body
  Tsitsi Dangarembga
• Burnt Sugar
  Avni Doshi
• The Shadow King
  Maaza Mengiste
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• Mayflies
  Andrew O'Hagan
• Piranesi
  Susanna Clarke
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• More Than a Woman
  Caitlin Moran
• The First Woman
  Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• Daddy
  Emma Cline
• Jack
  Marilynne Robinson
• Poor
  Caleb Femi
• That Old Country Music
  Kevin Barry
• I Am Not Your Baby Mother
  Candice Brathwaite
• Must I Go
  Yiyun Li
• Rodham
  Curtis Sittenfeld
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang
• American Poison

  How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise
  Eduardo Porter
• You People
  Nikita Lalwani
• Rainbow Milk
  Paul Mendez
• Wow, No Thank You.
  Samantha Irby
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• If I Had Your Face
  Frances Cha
• The Glass Hotel
  Emily St. John Mandel
• Redhead by the Side of the Road
  Anne Tyler
• The Collected Stories
  Lorrie Moore
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors
  Kawai Strong Washburn
• Weather
  Jenny Offill
• Real Life
  Brandon Taylor
• Such a Fun Age
  Kiley Reid
• Motherwell

  A Girlhood
  Deborah Orr
• Apeirogon
  Colum McCann
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• Hood Feminism

  Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
  Mikki Kendall
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• House of Glass

  The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family
  Hadley Freeman
• Actress
  Anne Enright
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Where the Wild Ladies Are
  Aoko Matsuda
• The Death of Comrade President
  Alain Mabanckou
• Minor Feelings

  An Asian American Reckoning
  Cathy Park Hong
• A Long Petal of the Sea
  Isabel Allende
• Our House Is on Fire

  Greta Thunberg's Call to Save the Planet
  Jeanette Winter

The New York Times: The 10 Best Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• Hidden Valley Road

  Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• A Promised Land
  Barack Obama
• Shakespeare in a Divided America

  What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
  James Shapiro
• Uncanny Valley
  Anna Wiener
• War

  How Conflict Shaped Us
  Margaret MacMillan

Time Magazine: The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 • The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019 • Best Books of 2018 • Top 20 Books of 2017]

1. Caste

   The Origins of Our Discontents
   Isabel Wilkerson
2. Minor Feelings

   An Asian American Reckoning
   Cathy Park Hong
3. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
   Wayétu Moore
4. Memorial Drive

   A Daughter's Memoir
   Natasha Trethewey
5. The Dead Are Arising

   The Life of Malcolm X
   Les Payne and Tamara Payne
6. Vesper Flights
   Helen Macdonald
7. The Undocumented Americans
   Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
8. Having and Being Had
   Eula Biss
9. Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
   Volker Ullrich
10. Just Us

    An American Conversation
    Claudia Rankine

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

• The Aosawa Murders
  Riku Onda
• The Beauty in Breaking
  Michele Harper
• The Beauty of Your Face
  Sahar Mustafah
• Becoming Wild

  How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
  Carl Safina
• Beheld
  TaraShea Nesbit
• The Biggest Bluff

  How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
  Maria Konnikova
• Black Wave

  Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
  Kim Ghattas
• Blacktop Wasteland
  S.A. Cosby
• The Book of Eels

  Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
  Patrik Svensson
• The Boy in the Field
  Margot Livesey
• Breasts and Eggs
  Mieko Kawakami
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• Burning Down the House

  Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party
  Julian E. Zelizer
• Caste

  The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Dead Are Arising

  The Life of Malcolm X
  Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• The Death of Jesus
  J.M. Coetzee
• The Death of Vivek Oji
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
  Anne Case & Angus Deaton
• Desert Notebooks

  A Road Map for the End of Time
  Ben Ehrenreich
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
  Deepa Anappara
• A Dominant Character

  The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
  Samanth Subramanian
• The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
  Wayétu Moore
• The Duke Who Didn't
  Courtney Milan
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• Eat the Buddha

  Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
  Barbara Demick
• The End of Everything

  (Astrophysically Speaking)
  Katie Mack
• Everywhere You Don't Belong
  Gabriel Bump
• Exercise of Power

  American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
  Robert M. Gates
• Fallout

  The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
  Lesley M.M. Blume
• Feed
  Tommy Pico
• Felon
  Reginald Dwayne Betts
• The Glass Kingdom
  Lawrence Osborne
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• The Hardhat Riot

  Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
  David Paul Kuhn
• Hidden Valley Road

  Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• His Only Wife
  Peace Adzo Medie
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang
• Hurricane Season
  Fernanda Melchor
• The Inevitability of Tragedy

  Henry Kissinger and His World
  Barry Gewen
• Jack
  Marilynne Robinson
• Just Us

  An American Conversation
  Claudia Rankine
• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
  Cho Nam-Joo
• The King at the Edge of the World
  Arthur Phillips
• Little Eyes
  Samanta Schweblin
• The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
  Adrian Tomine
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• The Man Who Ran Washington

  The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
  Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
• Man of My Time
  Dalia Sofer
• Memorial
  Bryan Washington
• Memorial Drive

  A Daughter's Memoir
  Natasha Trethewey
• The Memory Monster
  Yishai Sarid
• The Mercies
  Kirin Millwood Hargrave
• Minor Detail
  Adania Shibli
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• Missionaries
  Phil Klay
• Monogamy
  Sue Miller
• 97,196 Words
  Emmanuel Carrère
• Notes on a Silencing
  Lacy Crawford
• Obit
  Victoria Chang
• Overground Railroad

  The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America
  Candacy Taylor
• Owls of the Eastern Ice

  A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
  Jonathan C. Slaght
• A Peculiar Indifference

  The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America
  Elliott Currie
• A Pilgrimage to Eternity

  From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith
  Timothy Egan
• A Promised Land
  Barack Obama
• The Quiet Americans

  Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts
  Scott Anderson
• Reaganland

  America's Right Turn 1976-1980
  Rick Perlstein
• Real Life
  Brandon Taylor
• Red Pill
  Hari Kunzru
• The Saddest Words

  William Faulkner's Civil War
  Michael Edward Gorra
• Saint X
  Alexis Schaitkin
• Sea Wife
  Amity Gaige
• The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
  John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner (editors)
• Shakespeare in a Divided America

  What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
  James Shapiro
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors
  Kawai Strong Washburn
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• The Sirens of Mars

  Searching for Life on Another World
  Sarah Stewart Johnson
• Sisters
  Daisy Johnson
• Soul Full of Coal Dust

  A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia
  Chris Hamby
• The Splendid and the Vile

  A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
  Erik Larson
• The Third Rainbow Girl

  The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
  Emma Copley Eisenberg
• This Is All I Got

  A New Mother's Search for Home
  Lauren Sandler
• Tokyo Ueno Station
  Yu Miri
• The Tunnel
  A.B. Yehoshua
• Uncanny Valley
  Anna Wiener
• The Undocumented Americans
  Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• Until the End of Time

  Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
  Brian Greene
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• The Vapors

  A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice
  David Hill
• The WEIRDest People in the World

  How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
  Joseph Henrich
• Wagnerism

  Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
  Alex Ross
• War

  How Conflict Shaped Us
  Margaret MacMillan
• Who Gets In and Why

  A Year Inside College Admissions
  Jeffrey Selingo
• Why I Don't Write
  Susan Minot
• A Woman Like Her

  The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star
  Sanam Maher
• Writers & Lovers
  Lily King
• Yellow Bird

  Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
  Sierra Crane Murdoch

The Booker Prize: Best Fiction of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

Winner

• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart

shortlist

• The New Wilderness
  Diane Cook
• This Mournable Body
  Tsitsi Dangarembga
• Burnt Sugar
  Avni Doshi
• The Shadow King
  Maaza Mengiste
• Real Life
  Brandon Taylor

Longlist

• Who They Was
  Gabriel Krauze
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• Apeirogon
  Colum McCann
• Such a Fun Age
  Kiley Reid
• Redhead by the Side of the Road
  Anne Tyler
• Love and Other Thought Experiments
  Sophie Ward
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang

Time Magazine: The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020 • The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019 • Best Books of 2018 • Top 20 Books of 2017]

1. The Vanishing Half
   Brit Bennett
2. Shuggie Bain
   Douglas Stuart
3. The Mirror & the Light
   Hilary Mantel
4. A Children's Bible
   Lydia Millet
5. Homeland Elegies
   Ayad Akhtar
6. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
   Laura van den Berg
7. A Burning
   Megha Majumdar
8. Deacon King Kong
   James McBride
9. Where the Wild Ladies Are
   Aoko Matsuda
10. Breasts and Eggs
    Mieko Kawakami