Meet the 2024 National Book Award finalists

Introducing the finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards!

These books are each still under consideration for their genre's grand prize — praise and $10,000, to be handed out at a November 20 ceremony; all finalists will receive $1,000.

(Miss the longlists? Here there are by category: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature.) 

Fiction

• Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

• James by Percival Everett

• All Fours by Miranda July

• My Friends by Hisham Matar

Nonfiction

• Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León

• Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold

• Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne

• Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

• Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa

Poetry 

• Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

• […] by Fady Joudah

• mother by m.s. RedCherries

• Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss

Translated literature

• The Book Censor’s Library, written by Bothayna Al-Essa and translated from Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain

• Ædnan, written by Linnea Axelsson and translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel

• The Villain’s Dance, written by Fiston Mwanza Mujila and translated from French by Roland Glasser


• Pink Slime, written by Fernanda Trías and translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary

• Taiwan Travelogue, written by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King


• Where the Wind Calls Home, written by Samar Yazbek and translated from Arabic by Leri Price

Young people's literature

• Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan

• The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky by Josh Galarza

• The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

• Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi

• The Unboxing of a Black Girl by Angela Shanté