This morning the long list finalists for the National Book Award for the Fiction category were made known to the world. These authors join finalists from the other previously announced categories: nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature.
Subjects were remarkably varied, particularly in the category for young people’s literature, which included “works on the Siege of Leningrad and the Vietnam War, as well as novels about grief, sexuality, and mental illness,” as The New Yorker pointed out. The appearance of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir on race, Between the World and Me, on the nonfiction list was unsurprising. Notably absent from the fiction list was Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity.
The National Book Awards have launched the career of many writers, including Paul Monette, for his memoir Becoming a Man, Anthony Doerr, for All The Light We Cannot See, Mary McCarthy, for The Group, Rachel Kushner (for The Flamethrowers), and many more.
The long list will be condensed into a shortlist on October 14, and the winners will be announced on November 18.
Which books will you read?
Fiction
A Cure for Suicide: A Novel, by Jesse Ball
Did You Ever Have A Family, by Bill Clegg
Refund, Karen E. Bender
The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy
Fates and Furies: A Novel, by Lauren Groff
Fortune Smiles, by Adam Johnson
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Honeydew, by Edith Pearlman
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
Mislaid, by Nell Zink
***
Nonfiction
Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, by Cynthia Barnett
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mourning Lincoln, by Martha Hodes
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs, by Sally Mann
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, by Sy Montgomery
Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii, by Susanna Moore
Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays, by Michael Paterniti
If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran, by Carla Power
Ordinary Light: A Memoir, by Tracy K. Smith
Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir, by Michael White
***
Poetry
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, by Ross Gay
Scattered at Sea, by Amy Gerstler
A Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2014, by Marilyn Hacker
How to Be Drawn, by Terrance Hayes
The Beauty, by Jane Hirshfield
Voyage of the Sable Venus, by Robin Coste Lewis
Bright Dead Things, by Ada Limón
Elegy for a Broken Machine, by Patrick Phillips
Heaven, by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts, by Lawrence Raab
***
Young People’s Literature
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by M. T. Anderson
The Thing About Jellyfish, by Ali Benjamin
Walk on Earth a Stranger, by Rae Carson
This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs, by Gary Paulsen
Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
X: A Novel, by Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, by Steve Sheinkin
Challenger Deep, by Neal Shusterman
Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson
