The 2020 Tournament of Books

Has Ended But the Super Rooster is about to crow

The 2020 Tournament of Books presented by Field Notes has concluded, and the winner of the 2020 Rooster is Normal People by Sally Rooney. You can see the championship match here, or use the sidebar on the right to read through the entire Tournament’s matches.

This fall, the Super Rooster begins in October 2020: a month-long Tournament of Tournaments, meaning a ToB composed of the champions from the past 16 years of Tournaments. Feathers are going to fly.

For now, we’re still conducting Camp ToB 2020, our summer reading program—join in the fun! Weekly installments can be found over here. Whichever book wins the summer earns an automatic berth in the 2021 Tournament—so make sure to read along as the action unfolds.

For all of the fun and more, subscribe to the Rooster Newsletter and stay up to date on ToB-related announcements.

And please, help ensure the future of the ToB by becoming a Sustaining Member. It’s no exaggeration to say the Tournament happens because our Members make it happen. (Here are the details about why.)

Follow the Tournament of Books on Twitter and Facebook.

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If you’re new to the Tournament of Books, here’s how it works: Over the course of 18 matches—one each weekday—two works of fiction go head to head, with one of our judges deciding which book moves forward in the brackets, according to whatever criteria matters to them. Along the way, the judges reveal their biases and interests, any connections they have to the participating authors, and, most importantly, an elaborate explanation of how they decided between the two books.

From the eight opening round matches to the four quarterfinal matches through the two semifinal matches—and the potentially Tournament-disrupting “Zombie Round”—our original field of 18 competitors is whittled down to two finalists that will enter our championship match. There our entire judging panel weighs in, each judge picking their favorite of the two final books, and the book that receives the most votes takes home the Rooster.

Take a crash course in ToB lore with “A Brief History of the Tournament of Books.”