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October 7, 2025By Erin Somers

National Book Awards Shortlists

October 7, 2025By Erin Somers

The National Book Awards announced finalists, with the winners to be named on November 19:

Fiction
Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Grove Atlantic)
Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf)
Karen Russell, The Antidote (Knopf)
Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther (A Strange Object)
Bryan Washington, Palaver (FSG, publishes November 4)

Nonfiction
Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Knopf)
Julia Ioffe, Motherland (Ecco)
Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow (FSG)
Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State (Abrams)
Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns (Riverhead)

Young People’s Literature
Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving (Dial)
Amber McBride, The Leaving Room (Feiwel & Friends)
Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land (Levine Querido)
Hannah V. Sawyerr, Truth Is (Amulet)
Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin (Versify)

Translation
Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III), translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (New Directions)
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers (New Directions)
Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier, translated from the Dutch by David McKay (New Vessel)
Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel, translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega (Yale)
Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer (Seven Stories)

Poetry
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy (Copper Canyon)
Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost (Washington Square)
Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth (Washington Square)
Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon)
Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner)

Filed Under: Awards

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