NEW YORK ā Stories of race, class and climate change were among the fiction finalists Tuesday for the 71st annual National Book Awards.
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, announced five works in each of five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation and young people's literature. None of the authors have been finalists before, although novelist Lydia Millet has been on the fiction longlist of 10. Eight of the finalists were cited for their debut work.
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In paring the categories from last month's longlists, judges left off some of the year's most talked about books, including Brit Bennett's novel āThe Vanishing Halfā and Isabel Wilkerson's history of racism in the U.S., āCaste.ā Two of the so-called āBig Fiveā publishers were shut out entirely: Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster, although an honorary award will be given posthumously to Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, who died in May.
Millet's āA Children's Bibleā tells of a group of young people left to confront environmental disaster while the adults turn away. Other books in the fiction category include Deesha Philyaw's multigenerational story of Black women āThe Secret Lives of Church Ladies,ā Rumaan Alam's subtle and terrifying āLeave the World Behind," Douglas Stuart's working class family saga āShuggie Bain,ā and Charles Yu's satire of stereotypes and Hollywood, āInterior Chinatown."
In nonfiction, āThe Dead Are Arisingā marks the second time in the past decade that a Malcolm X biographer was posthumously cited by awards judges. In 2011, Manning Marable died just before the release of āMalcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,ā a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. āThe Dead Are Arisingā was co-authored by Tamara Payne and her father Les Payne, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who died in 2018.
Nonfiction nominees also include Karla Cornejo Villavicencio's āThe Undocumented Americans,ā Claudio Saunt's āUnworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory," Jenn Shapland's āMy Autobiography of Carson McCullersā and Jerald Walker's āHow to Make a Slave and Other Essays.ā
The poetry finalists are Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's āA Treatise on Stars,ā Tommye Blount's āFantasia for the Man in Blue,ā Don Mee Choi's āDMZ Colony," Anthony Cody's āBorderland Apocryphaā and Natalie Diaz's āPostcolonial Love Poem.ā
In translation, the finalists are Anja Kampmann for āHigh as the Waters Rise,ā translated from the German by Anne Posten; Jonas Hassen Khemiri's āThe Family Clause,ā translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies; Yu Miri's āTokyo Ueno Station,ā translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles; Pilar Quintana's āThe Bitch,ā translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman; and Adania Shibli's āMinor Detail,ā translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette.
Finalists for young people's literature are Kacen Callender's āKing and the Dragonflies," Traci Chee's āWe Are Not Free," Candice Iloh's āEvery Body Looking," Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed's āWhen Stars Are Scattered,ā and Gabriel Savit's āThe Way Back.ā
Winners in each of the competitive categories receive $10,000, with the money divided equally between the author and translator for best translated book. Judging panels of authors, critics and others in the bookselling community selected finalists from nearly 1,700 books submitted by publishers.
Winners will be announced during an online ceremony Nov. 18, with honorary medals to be presented to Reidy and to author Walter Mosley.