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 15, and winners will be announced in New York City on November 19.
One of the fiction finalists will be especially familiar to Millions readers. Emily St. John Mandel, whose Station Eleven has been winning high praise, has been a staff writer for us since 2009. Now might be a good moment to revisit her first piece for us: “Working the Double Shift” examined how many writers must write as a “second career” while a day job pays the bills.
You read about nearly all of the books on the Fiction longlist here first, as they appeared in our indispensable first-half and second-half previews.
In the other categories, many have pointed out that the Non-Fiction longlist includes just a single book by a female author.
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (excerpt)
The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol (The Millions interview)
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle (excerpt)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Doerr’s Year in Reading, 2010)
Redeployment by Phil Klay (excerpt)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Mandel’s Millions archive)
Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (McCracken’s Year in Reading, 2008)
Orfeo by Richard Powers (The Millions review)
Lila by Marilynne Robinson (excerpt)
Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Nonfiction:
Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (excerpt)
The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (excerpt)
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes by Anand Gopal (excerpt)
The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941 – 1942 by Nigel Hamilton (excerpt)
The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson (excerpt)
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr (excerpt)
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos (excerpt)
When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 by Ronald C. Rosbottom (excerpt)
Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart (excerpt)
The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson
Poetry:
Roget’s Illusion by Linda Bierds (excerpts and discussion)
A Several World by Brian Blanchfield (interview)
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück (review)
Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch (excerpt)
Second Childhood by Fanny Howe (review)
This Blue by Maureen N. McLane (review)
The Feel Trio by Fred Moten (excerpt)
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (excerpt)
The Road to Emmaus by Spencer Reese (profile)
Collected Poems by Mark Strand (biography)
Young People’s Literature:
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson (excerpt)
Girls Like Us by Gail Giles (excerpt)
Skink–No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen
Greenglass House by Kate Milford (excerpt)
Threatened by Eliot Schrefer
The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin (excerpt)
100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith (excerpt)
Noggin by John Corey Whaley (excerpt)
Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two by Deborah Wiles
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (excerpt)
Great list!
‘Go, Went, Gone” is a wonderful book and would make a worthy winner.
Surprising to see Han Kang back in the list after killing it in 2016. I actually did read ‘The Vegetarian’ with enthusiasm but was not too impressed. Last year’s A Horse Walks into a Bar was far better. And this year, I am not sure which one to root for. I have only heard a bit about Sadaawi’s book. Hmm.