These books just nabbed one of the most prestigious prizes in the literary world. How many have you read?
These Are the National Book Award Winners of 2024
Updated on Nov. 22, 2024
The 2024 National Book Awards are in the books! Hosted by Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon, the 75th National Book Awards ceremony, held on Nov. 20 in New York City, crowned five of the best books of the year and celebrated literature in its many forms.
“A book is an offering. It’s a hand in the darkness, a way of saying, ‘I know, isn’t this crazy?'” McKinnon, herself a children’s book author, said in her opening monologue. Referencing the growing popularity of AI, she added, “And that’s something a robot will never be able to do.”
By night’s end, five writers at the top of their game had earned one of America’s most prestigious prizes. Want to add some of the best books of the year to your must-read list? Keep scrolling to find out the National Book Award winners in the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature categories.
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What are the National Book Awards, exactly?
Hosted by the National Book Foundation, the National Book Awards were established in 1950 and are among the most prestigious prizes in the United States. (Past winners include William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich, Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward.)
This year, the foundation says, a total of 1,917 books were submitted for consideration across five categories:
- Fiction: 473
- Nonfiction: 671
- Poetry: 299
- Translated Literature: 141
- Young People’s Literature: 333
So what does the National Book Awards selection process entail? A panel of judges comprised of 25 distinguished writers, translators, critics, librarians and booksellers selects a list of 10 titles per category. That’s then narrowed down to five finalists, from which one winner is chosen for each category. Each finalist receives a $1,000 prize, a medal and a judges’ citation; winners receive $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.
The National Book Award winners of 2024
Here’s the rundown of the National Book Award winners by category. Some of the names will be familiar to anyone who loves to devour top-tier literature. If none of them ring a bell? Check them out the next time you’re browsing book genres in a library or bookstore.
Fiction
Winner: James by Percival Everett
This twist on Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is told from the perspective of Jim, an escaped slave traveling with Huck. Published this spring, James drew rapturous reviews from critics, with the New York Times raving that “it is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love” worthy of being read alongside the book that inspired it. The novel also just took honors as Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year.
Fiction runners-up:
- Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda
- Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
- All Fours by Miranda July
- My Friends by Hisham Matar
Nonfiction
Winner: Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León
An immersive account of the nearly seven years that author Jason De León spent embedded with human smugglers on the U.S.–Mexico border, Soldiers and Kings depicts traffickers as both victims and perpetrators of violence, often suffering from the same poverty as migrants. De León was perfectly positioned to write this powerhouse nonfiction book: He’s a professor of anthropology and Chicana/o studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights.
Nonfiction runners-up:
- 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
Winner: Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
The wide-ranging Something About Living collection is an expansive look at the erasure of Palestinian history and the Palestinian diaspora. Tuffaha, who’s been outspoken about the ongoing violence in Gaza, is also an essayist and translator and previously authored two poetry books.
Poetry runners-up:
- Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
- […] by Fady Joudah
- Mother by m.s. RedCherries
- Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Young People’s Literature
Winner: Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi
A wonderfully diverse coming-of-age novel, Shifa Saltagi Safadi’s Kareem Between follows a Syrian American boy named Kareem as he navigates seventh grade. Struggling to fit in, Kareem finds himself stuck between countries, friends, parents, ethics and even the right form of football. Safadi herself was born in Syria and immigrated to the United States at a young age.
Young People’s Literature runners-up:
- 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
- The Unboxing of a Black Girl by Angela Shanté
Translated Literature
Winner: Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (translated by Lin King)
Presented as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this historical fiction book chronicles the life and love of a novelist who travels from her home in Japan to Taiwan in 1938. As she and her interpreter travel around the island, the two women forge a bittersweet romance. Taiwan Travelogue was a smash hit when it was first published in Mandarin Chinese in 2020, and it won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award.
Translated Literature runners-up:
- The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa (translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain)
- Aednan by Linnea Axelsson (translated by Saskia Vogel)
- The Villain’s Dance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (translated by Roland Glasser)
- Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek (translated by Leri Price)
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Sources:
- National Book Foundation: “How the National Book Awards Work”
- National Book Foundation: “2024 Winners”
- New York Times: “Percival Everett, Author of ‘James,’ Wins National Book Award for Fiction”
- NPR: “Percival Everett wins the National Book Award fiction prize”
