This is not on my main lists (his Sophie's Choice is) but William Styron did win a Pulitzer for it (so it's on another list). This is a kind of novel I particularly like, extrapolating a story and characters from slight little bits of known history. The first other example that comes to mind is Girl with a Pearl Earring.
What is known about Nat Turner is that he fomented the only sustained revolt in the history (the written record) of U.S. slavery. I thought Styron did an excellent job of getting into a possible Turner's head and showing his character and the development of his divine plan. Therefore I am glad to have Styron's afterword, written for this 1992 volume, about reactions to the novel: he presumed to write from a black man's perspective; he is racist to have written about slavery and how captivity and ignorance can warp spirit and potential; the book is so not worth reading that reactions against it, but not it, appear on college syllabi.