Sigrid Nunez
American
Born 1951
Sigrid Nunez is an American author and writer who is best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. In 2025, Nunez was named as the recipient of a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in the fiction category.
On LuvemBooks, we've reviewed The Friend.
1
Books Reviewed
Ask LuvemBooks about Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez is an American novelist we know best through The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez, the 2018 National Book Award winner about a writer who inherits her dead mentor's Great Dane after his suicide. What stands out in the 1 book we've reviewed is how Nunez handles grief: acerbic, funny, and deliberately unsentimental rather than mournful. The Friend carries a 4.1/5 reader rating from over 8,800 Amazon ratings, and it's currently seeing a resurgence in interest.
- Where should I start?
- Start with The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez — it's the book we've reviewed, and it's the one that earned Nunez the 2018 National Book Award. The premise is immediately gripping: an unnamed novelist inherits Apollo, her dead mentor's Great Dane, after his suicide. It holds a 4.1/5 reader rating from 8,813 Amazon ratings, and its acerbic, funny take on grief makes it an accessible entry point despite the heavy subject.
- What's their writing style?
- Based on The Friend, the book we've reviewed, Nunez writes about grief in a way that's acerbic, funny, and unsentimental. Rather than wallowing, the novel filters loss through a wry, sharp narrator — an unnamed novelist navigating life with an inherited Great Dane. It's literary fiction that finds humor in mourning without trivializing it.
- Books we've reviewed
- We've reviewed 1 book by Sigrid Nunez. The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez is the 2018 National Book Award winner and NYT bestseller about an unnamed novelist who inherits her dead mentor's Great Dane after his suicide — grief rendered acerbic, funny, and unsentimental. It holds a 4.1/5 reader rating from 8,813 Amazon ratings and is currently trending as a resurgence.
- What genre do they write?
- Sigrid Nunez's genres aren't formally cataloged in our author data, but the book we've reviewed — The Friend — is Literary Fiction. It's a character-driven novel about a writer, grief, and an inherited Great Dane, which fits squarely in that tradition. Readers who enjoy introspective, voice-driven literary novels are the natural audience.
- What should I read after The Friend?
- Within Nunez's own catalog, What Are You Going Through is listed among their notable works and is the natural next step if The Friend's voice clicked for you. That said, The Friend is the only Nunez title we've reviewed on LuvemBooks, so it's where our coverage — and our recommendation — is strongest. Its 4.1/5 reader rating from 8,813 Amazon ratings reflects broad reader appreciation.
Who is Sigrid Nunez?
Where should I start?
What's their writing style?
Books we've reviewed
What genre do they write?
What should I read after The Friend?
Who is Sigrid Nunez?
Sigrid Nunez is an American author best known for their novels. Their notable works include What Are You Going Through, and they won the 2018 National Book Award for The Friend, which was also a New York Times bestseller. On LuvemBooks, we've reviewed 1 of their books so far.
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