46 Governor General's Award winning novels

Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me is a young adult novel written by Julie Johnston and published in 1994 by Lester in Toronto. The book was awarded the Governor General's Award for Text in Children's Literature in 1994, the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award in 1995, and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, also in 1995.

Airborn is a 2004 young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel. The novel is set in an alternate history where the airplane has not been invented, and instead, airships are the primary form of air transportation. Additionally, the world contains fictional animal species such as flying creatures that live their entire lives in the sky. The book takes place aboard a transoceanic luxury passenger airship, the Aurora, and is told from the perspective of its cabin boy, Matt Cruse.

Anil's Ghost is the critically acclaimed fourth novel by Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 2000 by McClelland and Stewart.

Awake and Dreaming is a children's novel by Canadian author Kit Pearson and illustrator Margot Zemach. It was first published in 1996. The book follows an impoverished, introverted nine-year-old girl named Theo Caffrey, who dreams of living with a "real" family.

The Back of the Turtle is a novel by Thomas King. Published by HarperCollins in 2014, the novel won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2014 Governor General's Awards.

Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the Governor General's Literary Award the same year. It is Engel's fifth novel, and her most famous. The story tells of a lonely librarian in northern Ontario who enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. The book has been called "the most controversial novel ever written in Canada".

Children of My Heart is a novel by Gabrielle Roy, published in 1977. The novel, Roy's last published work of fiction, was originally published in French as Ces enfants de ma vie.

Clara Callan is a novel by Canadian writer Richard B. Wright, published in 2001. It is the story of a woman in her thirties living in Ontario during the 1930s and is written in epistolary form, utilizing letters and journal entries to tell the story. The protagonist, Clara, faces the struggles of being a single woman in a rural community in the early 20th century. The novel won the Governor General's Award in English fiction category, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Award.

Cocksure is a novel by Mordecai Richler. It was first published in 1968 by McClelland and Stewart.

A Complicated Kindness (2004) is the third novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel won a number of awards including the Governor General's Award for English Fiction, the CBA Libris Fiction Award, and CBC's Canada Reads.

The Crazy Man is a 2005 Canadian children's novel written by Pamela Porter. This realistic family novel told in free verse has received many awards and was selected for the Governor General's Literary Award. The story is about a girl named Emaline who lives on a farm. Emaline's family falls apart after a terrible tractor accident. After chasing her beloved dog, Emaline's father accidentally runs over her leg with a tractor leaving her permanently disabled. Because of guilt, Emaline's father shoots her dog, Prince, and ends up leaving Emaline and her mother on their own. The narrative follows Emaline as she deals with prejudice, fear, her disability, and the absence of her father.

The Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and is considered one of the classics of Canadian literature.

Divisadero is a novel by Michael Ondaatje, first published on April 17, 2007 by McClelland and Stewart.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a novel by Madeleine Thien published in 2016 in Canada. It follows a 10-year-old girl and her mother who invite a Chinese refugee into their home. Critically acclaimed, in 2016 the author was awarded both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for this novel. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize as well as the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Earth and High Heaven was a 1944 novel by Gwethalyn Graham. It was the first Canadian novel to reach number one on The New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for 37 weeks, selling 125 000 copies in the United States that year.

The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The four main characters are: an unrecognisably burned man — the eponymous patient, presumed to be English; his Canadian Army nurse, a Sikh British Army sapper, and a Canadian thief. The story occurs during the North African Campaign and centres on the incremental revelations of the patient's actions prior to his injuries, and the emotional effects of these revelations on the other characters. The story is told by multiple characters and "authors" of books the characters are reading.

The Englishman's Boy is a novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe, published in 1996 by McClelland and Stewart, which won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1996 and was nominated for the Giller Prize. It deals with the events of the Cypress Hills Massacre (1873) as told 50 years later to a young screenwriter in Hollywood by the last living survivor.

Execution is a 1958 war novel by Canadian novelist and Second World War veteran Colin McDougall (1917–1984). Although it won McDougall the 1958 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, it was his only novel, and after publishing it to wide acclaim he retreated into a quiet life as Registrar of McGill University in Montreal. Nevertheless, Execution stands with Timothy Findley's The Wars and Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising as one of the most widely read and studied Canadian war novels of the twentieth century.

Gemini Summer is a children's book by Canadian author Iain Lawrence. It won the 2007 Governor General's Awards in Children's Literature among other awards.

The Great Victorian Collection, published in 1975, is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. Set in Carmel, California, it tells the story of a man who dreams that the empty parking lot he can see from his hotel window has been transformed by the arrival of a collection of priceless Victoriana on display in a vast open-air market. When he awakes he finds that he can no longer distinguish the dream from reality.

Greener Grass, published in 2009, is the second novel of Canadian author Caroline Pignat. The story revolves around a 14-year-old girl, Kit Byrne, living during the Great Famine of 1847 in Ireland. The Byrne family faces imminent eviction when their landlord, Lord Fraser, wants to repossess their land. He attempts to drive them out by raising the rent and having his estate manager, Lynch, set fires in the surrounding area. Kit works as a kitchen maid in the main house, but when she loses her job her mother is forced to sell precious family heirlooms and furniture. With her father dead, she must fight for survival and help her ailing mother and siblings escape Ireland for good.

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, quasi-Christian, totalitarian state, known as Gilead, that has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids," who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" – the ruling class of men.

The Hollow Tree is a children's historical novel by Janet Lunn. The book is the third in a trilogy, the first two being The Root Cellar and Shadow in Hawthorn Bay. Having progressed backward from the American Civil War in The Root Cellar, another few decades in Shadow in Hawthorn Bay, The Hollow Tree takes place during the starting of the American Revolution in 1777.

A Jest of God is a novel by Canadian author Margaret Laurence. It was first published in 1966. It won the Governor General's Award for 1966 and was made into the 1968 Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward film Rachel, Rachel.

The Law of Dreams is a historical fiction novel about the Great Famine of Ireland by Canadian author Peter Behrens. Published in 2006 by House of Anansi Press, it was the recipient of that year's Governor General's Award for English language fiction.

Lives of the Saints is a novel by Nino Ricci. The author's first book, it forms the first part of a trilogy. The other two novels are In a Glass House and Where She Has Gone. Lives of the Saints was first published in 1990 and was the winner of the 1990 Governor General's Awards for fiction.

Looking for X is a children's novel written for ages 9–12 by Deborah Ellis. This book is about an eleven-year-old girl named Khyber that lives in a poorer area, Regent Park, in Toronto, Ontario. She lives there with her mother and her twin brothers who are both autistic. One day Khyber shows up at school and is accused of breaking the windows of her teacher's classroom. When she is expelled she sets off in the middle of the night to find her friend X, a homeless woman who lives in the park across the street from her house. She is the only one that can clear Khyber's name. She spends all night wandering the streets in search of X and has the adventure of a lifetime.

The Luck of Ginger Coffey, a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, was published in 1960, in the United States by The Atlantic Monthly and in the United Kingdom by Andre Deutsch. In Canada, it received a Governor General's Award. The book was made into a film, directed by Irvin Kershner, and released in 1964. Robert Shaw starred in the title role.

The Luminaries is a 2013 novel by Eleanor Catton. Set in New Zealand's South Island in 1866, the novel follows Walter Moody, a prospector who travels to the West Coast settlement of Hokitika to make his fortune on the goldfields. Instead, he stumbles into a tense meeting between twelve local men, and is drawn into a complex mystery involving a series of unsolved crimes.

The Manticore is the second novel in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy.

A Perfect Night to Go to China is a novel by David Gilmour, published in 2005. It won the 2005 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction.

Pick-Up Sticks is a children's novel by Canadian author Sarah Ellis. The novel received the 1991 Governor General's Award for Children's Literature. The story is told from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl, Polly, as she experiences the struggles of losing her home and her comfortable life. Ellis stated that it was inspired by an interview with a homeless woman who was no longer able to care for her family.

The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen is a young adult novel by Canadian author Susin Nielsen, first published in 2012. It deals with the effects of a school shooting on the shooter's family.

The Sisters Brothers is a 2011 Western novel by Canadian-born author Patrick deWitt. The darkly comic story takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator, Eli Sisters, and his brother Charlie are assassins tasked with killing Hermann Kermit Warm, an ingenious prospector who has been accused of stealing from the Sisters' fearsome boss, the Commodore. Eli and Charlie experience a series of misadventures while tracking down Warm which resemble the narrative form of a picaresque novel, and the chapters are, according to one review, "slightly sketched-in, dangerously close to a film treatment."

D-Day the Sixth of June is a DeLuxe Color 1956 CinemaScope romance war film made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Henry Koster and produced by Charles Brackett from a screenplay by Ivan Moffat and Harry Brown, based on the 1955 novel, The Sixth of June by Lionel Shapiro.

St. Urbain's Horseman is the seventh novel by Canadian author Mordecai Richler. First published in 1971 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Governor General's Award for 1971.

The Stone Diaries is a 1993 novel by Carol Shields.

Street of Riches is a novel by the Canadian author Gabrielle Roy.

Such a Long Journey is a 1991 novel by Rohinton Mistry. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won several other awards. In 2010 the book made headlines when it was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's English syllabus after complaints from the Maharashtrian politician Aditya Thackeray.

The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy’s first novel, is a classic of Canadian fiction. Imbued with Roy's brand of compassion and understanding, this story focuses on a family in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal, its struggles to overcome poverty and ignorance, and its search for love.

True Confessions of a Heartless Girl received the Governor General's Literary Award in 2002 and is Martha Brooks' seventh novel for young adults. Martha Brooks is a Canadian award-winning novelist, playwright, jazz singer and author of short fiction. Some of her other novels are: Andrew's Tree, Being with Henry, Bone Dance, I Met a Bully on the Hill, Mistik Lake, Traveling On into the Light, Two Moons in August, Paradise Café and Other Stories, and Queen of Hearts. True Confessions of a Heartless Girl tells the story of Noreen Stall, a troubled and possibly pregnant seventeen-year-old girl who stumbles upon the town of Pembina Lake after stealing her boyfriend's truck and savings.

Two Solitudes is a 1945 novel by Hugh MacLennan. It popularized the term two solitudes to refer to the perceived lack of communication between English- and French-speaking Canadians.

The Wars is a 1977 novel by Timothy Findley that follows Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who enlists in World War I after the death of his beloved older sister in an attempt to escape both his grief and the social norms of oppressive Edwardian society. Drawn into the madness of war, Ross commits "a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death." Years later, a historian tries to piece together how he came to commit this act, interviewing the various people Ross interacted with.

The Watch That Ends the Night is a novel by Canadian author and academic Hugh MacLennan. The title refers to a line in Psalm 90. It was first published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada.

Whale Music is a novel by Canadian writer Paul Quarrington. It was first published by Doubleday Canada in 1989.

When Everything Feels Like the Movies is the debut young adult novel by Raziel Reid. The novel is narrated by the protagonist, Jude Rothesay, from a first-person perspective, and details his experiences and difficulties over a few days as a gay teenager in school. Reid was inspired by the events leading up to the 2008 murder of Larry King in Oxnard, California, as he perceived parallels between his life and King's life.