Novels by Karen and Bryan Washington are among the contenders for the fiction prize at the 2025 National Book Awards, while nonfiction works addressing topics such as Gaza, foster care and women’s issues in Russia are also in the running, The national Book Foundation announced the five finalists for the fiction category on Tuesday, with four of them having previously received recognition from the organization.
A finalist in 2014, Rabih Alameddine is nominated this year for his novel “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his Mother)”. Fellow finalist Karen Russell, for “The Antidote,” and Bryan Washington, for the upcoming “Palaver”, have both been featured on the foundation’s annual list of promising novelists under 35. Megan Majumdar, nominated for her forthcoming novel “A Guardian and a Thief,” had her debut novel “A Burning” longlisted in 2020.
The new entrant to the National Book Award recognition is Ethan Rutherford, whose debut novel “North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther” is published by the smallest press among the finalists, Deep Vellum.
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The foundation has revealed a total of 25 finalists across five categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature, with winners set to be announced at a ceremony in November. Notably, two of the shortlisted novels by Washington and Alameddine explore the connections and distances between gay men and their mothers. Rutherford’s and Russell’s works are rooted in historical fiction, while Majumdar’s narrative centers on an Indian woman’s tense week of attempting to emigrate amid a climate crisis.
Several nonfiction finalists tackle pressing contemporary issues. Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This examines the Western response to the devastation in Gaza. Jordan Thomas’s When it Will Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World addresses a destructive six-month fire season exacerbated by climate change. Claudia Rowe’s Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care advocates for reform in the foster care system.
Other nonfiction finalists include Yiyun Li’s memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow”, which discusses her experience of losing two sons to suicide, and Julia Loffe’s “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy”, which blends history, memoir, and reporting on her return to Russia nearly two decades after her family fled the Soviet Union.
In the poetry category, Richard Siken’s “I Do Know Some Things” reflects on his recovery from a stroke; Tiana Clark’s “Scorched Earth” explores historical pain alongside queer and Black joy; Patricia Smith’s “The intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems” features a collection of her work; Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s “The New Economy” offers a poetic perspective and Cathy Linh’s Che’s “Becoming Ghost” recounts her estranged parents’ journey as Vietnam War refugees to the United States.
Among the translated literature nominees, the standout title is “On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)” by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russel. This book is part of a seven-volume series in which an antiquarian book dealer relives the same day repeatedly.