Book award season enters high gear as the National Book Award finalists have been released. Winners will be announced in New York City on November 16.
The short list includes the big fall book by Colson Whitehead and Jacqueline Woodson’s first novel for adults in 20 years. It’s a great time to be a reader.
You read about nearly all of the books on the Fiction list 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“)
- 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 Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (“Scars That Never Fade“)
- Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (A Most Anticipated book)
Nonfiction:
- 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)
- The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez (excerpt)
- 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 Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler (poem)
- Look by Solmaz Sharif (the title poem)
Young People’s Literature:
- 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)
- Ghost by Jason Reynolds
- The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
