National Book Awards longlists include new works by Angela Flournoy, Susan Choi and Yiyun Li
NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 New fiction by Angela Flournoy and Susan Choi, a memoir of tragedy by Yiyun Li and a novel in translation by Nobel laureate Han Kang were among the nominees announced this week for the long lists of the National Book Awards.
NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 New fiction by Angela Flournoy and Susan Choi, a memoir of tragedy by Yiyun Li and a novel in translation by Nobel laureate Han Kang were among the nominees announced this week for the long lists of the National Book Awards.
announced 10 books in each of five categories 鈥 fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation and young people’s literature. The categories will be narrowed to five finalists on Oct. 7, and winners will be announced at a Nov. 19 dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when the foundation also will present honorary awards to author and author-publisher Roxane Gay.
Choi’s 鈥淔lashlight鈥 is her first novel since 2019, when she won the National Book Award for 鈥淭rust Exercise.鈥 Flournoy’s 鈥淭he Wilderness鈥 came out a decade after she was a National Book Award finalist for 鈥淭he Turner House.鈥 Other fiction nominees include Megha Majumdar’s 鈥淎 Guardian and a Thief,鈥 the follow-up to her celebrated debut from 2020, 鈥淎 Burning鈥; Bryan Washington’s 鈥淧alaver鈥 and the latest collection from acclaimed short story author Joy Williams, 鈥淭he Pelican Child.鈥
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Li’s 鈥淭hings In Nature Merely Grow鈥 opens with a painful acknowledgment, 鈥淭here is no good way to say this,鈥 as she attempts to make sense of the suicides of her two teenage sons. The author is also known for such prize-winning fiction as 鈥淭he Book of Goose鈥 and 鈥淲here Reasons End,鈥 an imagined dialogue between a mother and her son, who has taken his own life.
Nonfiction nominees also include Julia Ioffe’s 鈥淢otherland,鈥 a feminist history of Russia over the past century, and Claudia Rowe’s 鈥淲ards of the State,鈥 which probes the American foster care system.
Han Kang’s 鈥淲e Do Not Part,鈥 translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, reflects upon the 1948-49 Jeju uprising, when the U.S.-backed South Korean government killed tens of thousands of rebels on Jeju Island. Jazmina Barrera’s 鈥淭he Queen of Swords,鈥 translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney; Hamid Ismailov’s 鈥淲e Computers,鈥 translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega; and Mohamed Kheir’s 鈥淪leep Phase,鈥 translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger, are among the other translation nominees.
Mahogany Browne’s 鈥淎 Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe鈥 is a nominee in young people’s literature, a category which also features Ibi Zoboi’s 鈥(S)kin,鈥 K. Ancrum’s 鈥淭he Corruption of Hollis Brown鈥 and Amber McBride’s 鈥淭he Leaving Room.鈥 In poetry, the books include Patricia Smith’s 鈥淭he Intentions of Thunder,鈥 Esther Lin’s 鈥淐old Thief Place,鈥 Natalie Shapero’s 鈥淪tay Dead鈥 and Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s 鈥淭he New Economy.鈥
To join the conversation set a first and last name in your user profile.
Sign in or register for free to join the Conversation