Nice and the Good Iris Murdoch 1969 The Unfortunates B. S. Johnson Happiness Mary Lavin The Godfather Mario Puzo 1970 Fifth Business Robertson Davies Master and Commander Patrick O’Brian 1971 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth St Urbain’s Horseman Mordecai Richler Black List, Section H Francis Stuart 1972 The Optimist’s Daughter Eudora Welty 1973 The Siege of Krishnapur J. G. Farrell Gravity’s Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1975 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow Heat and Dust Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Changing Places David Lodge 1976 The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Alistair MacLeod Interview with the Vampire Anne Rice Saville David Storey 1977 Injury Time Beryl Bainbridge Falconer John Cheever A Book of Common Prayer Joan Didion The Ice Age Margaret Drabble 1978 Tirra Lirra by the River Jessica Anderson Plumb Maurice Gee The Human Factor Graham Greene The Murderer Roy A. K. Heath The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 1979 The Year of the French Thomas Flanagan From the Fifteenth District Mavis Gallant Burger’s Daughter Nadine Gordimer Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick The Executioner’s Song Norman Mailer A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1980 Earthly Powers Anthony Burgess The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard Riddley Walker Russell Hoban Lamb Bernard MacLaverty So Long, See You Tomorrow William Maxwell Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole Puffball Fay Weldon 1981 Lanark Alasdair Gray Red Dragon Thomas Harris Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie A Flag for Sunrise Robert Stone 1982 On the Black Hill Bruce Chatwin Schindler’s Ark Thomas Keneally (US: Schindler’s List ) The Color Purple Alice Walker A Boy’s Own Story Edmund White 1984 Money Martin Amis Empire of the Sun J. G. Ballard Flaubert’s Parrot Julian Barnes In Custody Anita Desai The Children’s Bach Helen Garner Nation of Fools Balraj Khanna Machine Dreams Jayne Anne Phillips 1985 Family and Friends Anita Brookner Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry Black Robe Brian Moore Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson 1986 The Sportswriter Richard Ford An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro A Summons to Memphis Peter Taylor A Dark-Adapted Eye Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) 1987 Ellen Foster Kaye Gibbons Double Whammy Carl Hiaasen Misery Stephen King Beloved Toni Morrison In the Skin of a Lion Michael Ondaatje The Other Garden Francis Wyndham 1988 Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey Where I’m Calling From Raymond Carver Paris Trout Pete Dexter The Sugar Mother Elizabeth Jolley Forty-Seventeen Frank Moorhouse Ice-Candy-Man Bapsi Sidhwa Breathing Lessons Anne Tyler The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1989 The Book of Evidence John Banville The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1990 Possession A. S. Byatt Age of Iron J. M. Coetzee A Home at the End of the World Michael Cunningham The Snapper Roddy Doyle Get Shorty Elmore Leonard Amongst Women John McGahern The Great World David Malouf Friend of My Youth Alice Munro 1991 The Regeneration Trilogy (1991–95) Pat Barker Wise Children Angela Carter A Strange and Sublime Address Amit Chaudhuri American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis The Redundancy of Courage Timothy Mo Mating Norman Rush Downriver Iain Sinclair A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley Reading Turgenev William Trevor Cloudstreet Tim Winton 1992 Death and Nightingales Eugene McCabe The Butcher Boy Patrick McCabe The Secret History Donna Tartt 1993 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides Birdsong Sebastian Faulks A River Sutra Gita Mehta The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx My Idea of Fun Will Self A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth Trainspotting Irvine Welsh 1994 What a Carve Up! Jonathan Coe (US: The Winshaw Legacy ) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernières (US: Corelli’s Mandolin ) The Folding Star Alan Hollinghurst Original Sin P. D. James How Late it Was, How Late James Kelman 1995 The Tortilla Curtain T. Coraghessan Boyle The Blue Flower Penelope Fitzgerald A Fine Balance Rohinton