National Book Award: Winners, Finalists, and Longlisted Titles

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay a battyman in Jamaican argot and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.

One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.

In The Disappearers, James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.

From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid and timely novel that moves from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, following a Haitian American woman whose sense of self and family is forever altered after she survives a random act of violence one sunny Florida day.

Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die? These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami, after she hears gunfire erupt while shopping for her daughter s first cell phone. Seeking shelter inside a restaurant called Oasis, Magnolia huddles with frightened strangers, each praying to their own gods as chaos unfolds around them.

Once safely home, Magnolia hides the truth about being at the mall during the shooting from those closest to her. But surviving the tragedy forces her to confront her life with startling clarity. She begins to reevaluate the bond she shares with her daughter, Zo ; the strained relationship with her partner, Harrison; and the lingering wounds carried by her parents, whose pain and unraveling histories continue to shape her own fears and identity.

As Magnolia journeys through memories, grief, and unanswered questions, she must also come to terms with the losses tied to that traumatic day losses that echo through communities far too often in modern life. Torn between Miami and Haiti, marriage and solitude, the living and the dead, Magnolia searches for where she truly belongs.

Taking its title from the Creole word for mourning, D y is a profound and deeply moving novel about grief, survival, family, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. Through Magnolia s story, the novel explores the enduring ties that connect us shared meals, gardens, memories, and love even in the face of violence and uncertainty.

The New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Award-winning author and journalist Wil Haygood explores how the Vietnam War became a mirror for the struggle of Black Americans fighting for freedom abroad while demanding equality at home and a powerful lens through which to understand the racial and political divides that continue to shape American life.

With this book, Wil Haygood has become the preeminent chronicler of the Black experience in America. Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb

In these masterful pages, Haygood reframes both the Vietnam War and the United States unfinished struggle for equality. Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La

Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America.

Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public; and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety.

Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation.

The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.

A young professor grapples with homophobia in Muslim Senegal in this searching, heart-wrenching novel from the National Book Award longlisted author of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

A viral video makes the rounds in Dakar, showing an incensed crowd that gathers to dig up a grave and drag the corpse from holy ground. When Ndéné, a French literature teacher, watches it, he’s surprisingly affected. Who was this man, and what could he have done to deserve such a fate? The answer soon becomes clear: he was a “g or-jigéen,” one of the so-called “men-women,” the shameful label given to homosexuals, cross-dressers, or any man who lives outside the accepted norm.

Haunted by the video, Ndéné sets out to learn more. With the help of a friend who works in night life, he explores a hidden side of Dakar, away from the rigid Islam of his family and university. Although he feels a certain disgust for homosexuality, he’s moved by the suffering and resilience of the people he meets. But the further he goes, the more he doubts his own identity, threatening to become an object of suspicion and scorn himself.

A powerful, nuanced portrait of queerness in a conservative society, Pure Men asks the fundamental question of how to find the courage to be true to yourself, whatever the cost.