Book award season enters high gear as the National Book Award finalists have been released in a series of four longlists consisting of ten books apiece. Five finalists in each category will be announced on October 13, and winners will be announced in New York City on November 16.
The fiction list seems well balanced but also includes many familiar names. Alongside highly touted books by Colson Whitehead and Garth Greenwell are critical darlings like Lydia Millet and Karan Mahajan. It’s a great time to be a reader.
You read about nearly all of the books on the Fiction longlist here first, of course, as they appeared in our indispensable first-half and second-half previews.
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
- The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder (“Men in Tights Crammed into Confined Spaces“)
- What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (“ISO the Next Great Gay Novel“)
- Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (A Most Anticipated book)
- News of the World by Paulette Jiles (excerpt (pdf))
- The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (I Want Complete Freedom When I Write: The Millions Interviews Karan Mahajan)
- The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie (excerpt)
- Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet (Lydia Millet, writing at The Millions)
- Miss Jane by Brad Watson (Brad Watson’s Year in Reading)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (“Scars That Never Fade“)
- Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (A Most Anticipated book)
Nonfiction:
- America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich (excerpt)
- The Firebrand and the First Lady, Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott (excerpt)
- Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen (interview)
- Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild (Most Anticipated)
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (excerpt)
- Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Year in Reading)
- Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil (Most Anticipated)
- The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez (excerpt)
- The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition by Manisha Sinha (interview)
- Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson (Most Anticipated)
Poetry:
- The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky
- Collected Poems 1974–2004 by Rita Dove (Race and American Poetry: Dove v. Vendler)
- Archeophonics by Peter Gizzi (Peter Gizzi on J.H. Prynne)
- The Selected Poems of Donald Hall by Donald Hall (Sonya Chung on Donald Hall)
- The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler (poem)
- Bestiary by Donika Kelly (poem)
- World of Made and Unmade by Jane Mead
- Look by Solmaz Sharif (the title poem)
- Blackacre by Monica Youn (Siobhan Phillips on Monica Youn)
- Blue Laws by Kevin Young (poem)
Young People’s Literature:
- Booked by Kwame Alexander (excerpt)
- Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo (Susan Orlean on Kate DiCamillo)
- March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (our review of Book One in the series)
- When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin (excerpt)
- When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore (excerpt)
- Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina (excerpt(pdf))
- Pax by Sara Pennypacker and Jon Klassen
- Ghost by Jason Reynolds
- Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story by Caren Stelson (excerpt)
- The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
