This week, The New Yorker announced the shortlist for the 2023 National Book Award. Earlier, we made a list of young adult literature, translated literature, poetry, and non-fiction.
In Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut feature, Chain-Gang All-Stars, death matches between primarily black inmates are broadcast live for the entertainment of viewers. The book is an indictment of the criminal justice system, one of several on the long list that centers on violent attempts to impose racial or creed hierarchies. Mona Susan Power’s “Board of Dolls” details the cruelty of Indian boarding schools designed to “civilize” Native American children. Paul Harding’s “Another Eden” is inspired by the history of Malaga Island, a mixed-race community off the coast of Maine whose residents were forcibly evicted in the early twentieth century. Some were institutionalized. Hanna Pylväinen’s The End of Drumming Time imagines a difficult encounter between the Sami indigenous people of Scandinavia and a Lutheran priest who works to convert them. Justin Torres’s Blackouts continues the work of queer sexologist Jan Gay, a medieval study chosen to pathologize homosexuality.
The ten books on the list were selected from four hundred and ninety-six submissions from publishers. Three authors on the shortlist, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brennyah, Jayne Anne Phillips and Justin Torres, have previously received recognitions from the National Book Foundation. The full list is below.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Free Mp3 Download“Chain Gang All-Stars”
Pantheon Books/Penguin Random House
Alia Bilal“Temple Man”
Simon and Schuster
Elliot Duncan“Ponyboy”
WW Norton Company
Paul Harding“Another Eden”
WW Norton Company
Tania James,”plunder”
Knopf/Penguin Random House
Jayne Anne Phillips“Night Watch”
Knopf/Penguin Random House
Mona Susan Ball“Doll Committee”
Sailor Books/HarperCollins
Hannah Pilvenin“The end of drumming time”
Henry Holt Company/Macmillan Publishers
Justin Torres,”power failure”
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux/Macmillan
LaToya Watkins“Shout, kid.”
Little Book of Indemnity/Penguin Random House
Judges for this year’s award are Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay; Calvin Crosby, co-owner of King’s English Books; Silas House, whose novel The Skylark “Ascending” won the 2023 Southern Book Award for Fiction; Mat Johnson, professor of humanities at the University of Oregon and author of “The Unseen” and “Pym”; Helena Maria Viramontes María Viramontes), professor of English at Cornell University and author of “At the Feet of Jesus” and “Their Dogs Walked with Them.” ❖
