Every year the National Book Foundation features a few fresh faces or unfamiliar names among the nominees for its annual literary prize. This time around, though, there's a twist. One of the actual National Book Award categories is something readers have not seen for quite some time: a prize for a work in translation.
Not since the early 1980s — that heady (and brief) era when the prize was renamed the American Book Award — has the National Book Foundation formally recognized translated literature. The group hasn't even added a new category, period, for more than two decades.
But this November, when the organization holds its ritzy gala in New York City, honors will be doled out to one exemplary work of fiction or nonfiction that has been translated into English and published in the U.S.
For now, 10 books remain in the running for that prize.
That's the case for the classic categories, as well. Check out the longlists of nominees for the National Book Awards below, and check back here on Oct. 10, when the finalists are expected to be announced.
FictionNonfictionPoetryTranslated LiteratureYoung People's Literature
Fiction
- Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man
- Jennifer Clement, Gun Love
- Lauren Groff, Florida
- Daniel Gumbiner, The Boatbuilder
- Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking
- Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
- Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
- Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
- Tommy Orange, There There
- Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People
Nonfiction
- Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
- Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
- Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple, Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War
- Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
- David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
- Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
- Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)
- Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
- Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
Poetry
- Rae Armantrout, Wobble
- Jos Charles, feeld
- Forrest Gander, Be With
- Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
- Michael Martinez, Museum of the Americas
- Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of
- Justin Phillip Reed, Indecency
- Raquel Salas Rivera, lo terciario / the tertiary
- Natasha Trethewey, Monument: Poems New and Selected
- Jenny Xie, Eye Level
Translated Literature
- Négar Djavadi, DisorientalTranslated by Tina Kover
- Roque Larraquy, ComemadreTranslated by Heather Cleary
- Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of IraqTranslated by Dunya Mikhail and Max Weiss
- Perumal Murugan, One Part WomanTranslated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
- Hanne Ørstavik, LoveTranslated by Martin Aitken
- Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner LifeTranslated by Kari Dickson
- Domenico Starnone, TrickTranslated by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Yoko Tawada, The EmissaryTranslated by Margaret Mitsutani
- Olga Tokarczuk, FlightsTranslated by Jennifer Croft
- Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial WorldsTranslated by Anya Migdal
Young People's Literature
- Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
- M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
- Bryan Bliss, We'll Fly Away
- Leslie Connor, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
- Christopher Paul Curtis, The Journey of Little Charlie
- Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo
- Tahereh Mafi, A Very Large Expanse of Sea
- Joy McCullough, Blood Water Paint
- Elizabeth Partridge, Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam
- Vesper Stamper, What the Night Sings
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