FICTION WINNER
James McBride
Deacon King Kong
(Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC)
Portraying a 1969 Brooklyn neighborhood through its outsiders, McBride creates tragedies, funny moments, major plot twists, and cultural and generational clashes. When the titular deacon, Sportcoat, the least likely of heroes, shoots a 19-year-old drug-dealer, everyone assumes the deacon’s days of freedom are numbered. But all is not as it seems.
NONFICTION WINNER
Rebecca Giggs
Fathoms: The World in the Whale
(Simon & Schuster)
Focusing on the history and current plight of whales, Giggs considers our ancient and persistent whale wonderment, high-tech whale hunting, the 1970s Save the Whales movement, global warming, mass extinction, and pollution, including the oceanic plastic plague. Deeply researched and deeply felt, Giggs’ revelatory and haunting investigation urges us to save the whales once again, and the oceans, and ourselves.
SHORTLIST
FICTION FINALISTS
A Burning
Megha Majumdar
(Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC)
After witnessing a gruesome train-station attack during her walk home to the slums, Jivan responds to a Facebook post. Days later, she has been beaten, jailed, and accused of terrorism, and the two people who could possibly save her have other priorities. Majumdar’s electrifying debut serves as a barometer measuring the seeming triviality of human life and the fragility of human connections.
Deacon King Kong
James McBride
(Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC)
Portraying a 1969 Brooklyn neighborhood through its outsiders, McBride creates tragedies, funny moments, major plot twists, and cultural and generational clashes. When the titular deacon, Sportcoat, the least likely of heroes, shoots a 19-year-old drug-dealer, everyone assumes the deacon’s days of freedom are numbered. But all is not as it seems.
Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
(Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.)
Akhtar confronts issues of race, money, family, politics, and sexuality in this bold, memoiristic novel about a young Pakistani American before and after 9/11. Money, and the debasement of other values, is a defining element of narrator Ayad’s relationship with his writing and his father, while the country’s crude racism prods both men to question whether America can ever truly be their home.
NONFICTION FINALISTS
Fathoms: The World in the Whale
Rebecca Giggs
(Simon & Schuster)
Focusing on the history and current plight of whales, Giggs considers our ancient and persistent whale wonderment, high-tech whale hunting, the 1970s Save the Whales movement, global warming, mass extinction, and pollution, including the oceanic plastic plague. Deeply researched and deeply felt, Giggs’ revelatory and haunting investigation urges us to save the whales once again, and the oceans, and ourselves.
Just Us: An American Conversation.
Claudia Rankine
(Graywolf Press)
With an arresting blend of essays and images that’s perfectly attuned to this long-overdue moment of racial reckoning, Rankine analyzes the overwhelming power of whiteness in everyday interactions. Touching on Beyoncé, blondness, skin lightening, and the inherent tensions in her own interracial marriage, Rankine once again opens a literary window into the Black experience.
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
Natasha Trethewey
(Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins)
In her memoir, a work of exquisitely distilled anguish and elegiac drama, Trethewey confronts the horror of her mother’s murder through finely honed, evermore harrowing memories, dreams, visions, and musings. She writes, “To survive trauma, one must be able to tell a story about it.” And tell her tragic story she does in this lyrical, courageous, and resounding remembrance.
LONGLIST
FICTION
Click images to enlarge
Ackerman, Elliot.
Red Dress in Black and White.
(Knopf)
Akhtar, Ayad.
Homeland Elegies.
(Little, Brown)
Bennett, Brit.
The Vanishing Half.
(Riverhead)
Bertino, Marie-Helene.
Parakeet.
(Farrar)
Erdrich, Louise.
The Night Watchman. (Harper)
Ford, Kelli Jo.
Crooked Hallelujah.
(Grove)
Gyasi, Yaa.
Transcendent Kingdom.
(Knopf)
Herbert, Julián.
Translated by Christina MacSweeney.
Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino.
(Graywolf)
Lacey, Catherine.
Pew.
(Farrar)
Leilani, Raven.
Luster.
(Farrar)
Majumdar, Megha.
A Burning.
(Knopf)
Mandel, Emily St. John.
The Glass Hotel.
(Knopf)
McBride, James.
Deacon King Kong.
(Riverhead)
McCann, Colum.
Apeirogon.
(Random)
Melchor, Fernanda.
Translated by Sophie Hughes.
Hurricane Season.
(New Directions)
Mitchell, David.
Utopia Avenue.
(Random)
O’Farrell, Maggie.
Hamnet.
(Knopf)
Offill, Jenny.
Weather.
(Knopf)
Ono, Masatsugu.
Translated by Angus Turvill.
Echo on the Bay.
(Two Lines)
Robinson, Marilynne.
Jack.
(Farrar)
Stuart, Douglas.
Shuggie Bain.
(Grove)
Swift, Graham.
Here We Are.
(Knopf)
Tobar, Héctor.
The Last Great Road Bum.
(Farrar/MCD)
Yoon, Paul.
Run Me to Earth.
(Simon & Schuster)
Yu, Charles.
Interior Chinatown.
(Pantheon)
Washington, Bryan.
Memorial.
(Riverhead)
NONFICTION
Click images to enlarge
Bregman, Rutger.
Translated by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore.
Humankind: A Hopeful History.
(Little, Brown)
Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla.
The Undocumented Americans.
(Random/One World)
Demick, Barbara.
Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town.
(Random)
Giggs, Rebecca.
Fathoms: The World in the Whale.
(Simon & Schuster)
Harper, Michele.
The Beauty in Breaking.
(Riverhead)
Harvey, Miles.
The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch.
(Little, Brown)
Hong, Cathy Park.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.
(Random/One World)
Jackson, Jeffrey H.
Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis.
(Algonquin)
Kolker, Robert.
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family.
(Doubleday)
Lalami, Laila.
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America.
(Pantheon)
Mikhail, Alan.
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World.
(Norton/Liveright)
Moore, Wayétu.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women.
(Graywolf)
Payne, Les and Tamara Payne.
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X.
(Norton/Liveright)
Rankine, Claudia.
Just Us: An American Conversation.
(Graywolf)
Shapland, Jenn.
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers.
(Tin House)
Solnit, Rebecca.
Recollections of My Nonexistence.
(Viking)
Svensson, Patrik.
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creatures in the Natural World.
(Ecco)
Trethewey, Natasha.
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir.
(Ecco)
Wilkerson, Isabel.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
(Random)
Yang, Jia Lynn.
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965.
(Norton)
