National Book Award Shortlist 2025

The shortlist for the 2025 National Book Awards has been announced. These annual American literary awards have been presented since 1936. Each finalist received $1000, a medal and a citation, while the winners get $10,000 and a bronze sculpture. 

The Longlist of ten titles per category has been reduced to a shortlist of five. 

The 2025 Shortlist 2025 is as follows:

Fiction

• Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
  
• Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
• Karen Russell, The Antidote
• Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther
• Bryan Washington, Palaver

My pick for winner was Susan Choi for Flashlight,  but this was not shortlisted. Of the shortlisted titles, the one I am most interested in is Palaver, about a gay man estranged from his family living in Tokyo who receives an unexpected visit from his mother. 

Non-Fiction

• Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
• Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
• Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow 
• Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
• Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

This is an interesting shortlist with intriguing titles. I predicted Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow would be here and may win. The other titles explore the West's hypocrisy about Gaza, the Russian retreat from feminism, the American foster care system, and fire fighting in California.  

Poetry

• Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy
• Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost
• Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth
• Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things
• Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems

Regrettably I am not familiar with any of these poets, so I spent some time exploring their work on the Poetry Foundation website which has a small selection of verse from each poet. 

Translated Literature 

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

I was a bit surprised to see that Nobel Laureate Han Kang was not included on the shortlist for We Do Not Part.  Of these titles the one I am most interested in is Solvej Balle's novel, but as it is the third volume of a trilogy, I don't expect I will get to it anytime soon. 

Young People's Literature

• Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving
• Amber McBride, The Leaving Room
• Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story
• Hannah V Sawyerr, Truth Is
• Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin

The ceremony when the winners will be announced is on 19 November 2025.