{"id":24858,"date":"2025-09-16T01:18:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T01:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/24858\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T01:18:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T01:18:16","slug":"congratulations-to-our-national-book-awards-longlisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/24858\/","title":{"rendered":"Congratulations to Our National Book Awards Longlisters!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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13 Penguin Random House titles and two PRHPS titles were selected for the National Book Awards longlists!<\/p>\n

Last week, the\u00a0National Book Foundation<\/a>, a nonprofit organization, announced the longlists for the\u00a076th National Book Awards<\/a>. Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are American literary prizes administered by the National Book Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re honored to share that 13 Penguin Random House titles and two PRHPS titles were selected for the National Book Awards longlists! The categories include Young People\u2019s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction.<\/p>\n

The finalists will be announced on Tuesday, October 7. The National Book Awards Ceremony will be broadcast live from\u2028Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 8 p.m. EST, free for anyone to view. For more information about the 76th National Book Awards and to register to watch the live ceremony, please visit\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Young People\u2019s Literature<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>THE INCREDIBLY HUMAN HENSON BLAYZE by Derrick Barnes<\/a> (Viking Books for Young Readers; Listening Library)<\/p>\n

In the small town of Great Mountain, Mississippi, all eyes are on Henson Blayze, a thirteen-year-old football phenom whose talents seem almost superhuman. The predominately white townsfolk have been waiting for Henson to play high-school ball, and now they\u2019re overjoyed to finally possess an elite Black athlete of their own.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>A BIRD IN THE AIR MEANS WE CAN STILL BREATHE by Mahogany L. Browne<\/a> (Crown Books for Young Readers; Listening Library)<\/p>\n

In New York City, teens, their families, and their communities feel the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the fear and loss, these teens and the adults around them persevere with love and hope while living in difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>A WORLD WORTH SAVING by Kyle Lukoff\u00a0<\/a>(Dial Books for Young Readers; Listening Library)<\/p>\n

Covid lockdown is over, but A\u2019s world feels smaller than ever. Coming out as trans didn\u2019t exactly go well, and most days, he barely leaves his bedroom, let alone the house. But the low point of A\u2019s life isn\u2019t online school, missing his bar mitzvah, or the fact that his parents monitor his phone like hawks\u2014it\u2019s the weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters meetings his parents all but drag him to.<\/p>\n

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Translated Literature<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>HUNCHBACK<\/a> by Saou Ichiwaka, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Hogarth; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka\u2019s physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (\u201cIn another life, I\u2019d like to work as a high-class prostitute\u201d). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To Shaka\u2019s surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka\u2019s sense of herself as a woman in the world.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>WE DO NOT PART<\/a> by Han Kang, translated, translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

One winter morning in Seoul, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at the hospital. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet\u2014a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon\u2019s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal\u2014or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn\u2019t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into darkness that awaits her at her friend\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

Poetry<\/p>\n

\"DeathDEATH OF THE FIRST IDEA<\/a> by Rickey Laurentiis (Knopf; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

When Rickey Laurentiis debuted in 2015 with Boy with Thorn, the poetry world heralded the arrival of an astonishing new lyric talent. \u201cCall Rickey Laurentiis\u2019 stylistic range virtuosity or call it correctly, necessity,\u201d Terrance Hayes wrote. In the past decade, as Laurentiis has transitioned, her ideas of the lyric and poetry have transformed, as has the America in which she lives. This staggering, irreverent, gentle, and erotic book is a record of that ten-year journey. It draws on, expands, and then fractures the many poetic traditions which informed Laurentiis\u2019s poetics\u2014from Greek odes and early Black Spirituals to the work of Whitman and Dickinson and the mid-century cinematic icon The Lady Chablis.<\/p>\n

Nonfiction<\/p>\n

\"\"ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS <\/a>by\u00a0Omar El Akkad (Knopf; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: \u201cOne day, when it\u2019s safe, when there\u2019s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it\u2019s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.\u201d This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>BLACK MOSES: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State <\/a>by Caleb Gayle (Riverhead; Penguin Audio)<\/p>\n

In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people \u2014 and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>FOR THE SUN AFTER LONG NIGHTS: The Story of Iran\u2019s Women-Led Uprising<\/a> by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy (Pantheon; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa J\u00eena Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic\u2019s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians\u2014mostly women\u2014who took to the streets in one of the country\u2019s largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.<\/p>\n

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\"\"WHEN IT ALL BURNS: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World <\/a>by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead; Penguin Audio)<\/p>\n

Eighteen of California\u2019s largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term \u201cmegafire\u201d to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.<\/p>\n

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Fiction<\/p>\n

\"AA GUARDIAN AND A THIEF <\/a>by Megha Majumdar (Knopf; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma\u2019s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma\u2019s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.<\/p>\n

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\"TheTHE ANTIDOTE <\/a>by Karen Russell (Knopf; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

The Antidote\u00a0opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing\u2014not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories.\u00a0The Antidote\u00a0follows a \u201cPrairie Witch,\u201d whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples\u2019 memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch\u2019s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town\u2019s secrets and its fate.<\/p>\n

\"TheTHE PELICAN CHILD <\/a>by Joy Williams (Knopf; Random House Audio)<\/p>\n

\u201cNight was best, for, as everyone knows, but does not tell, the sobbing of the earth is most audible at night.\u201d \u201cMen are but unconscious machines and they perform their cruelties so effortlessly.\u201d \u201cCaring was a power she\u2019d once possessed but had given up freely.\u201d The sentences of Joy Williams are like no other\u2014the coiled wit, the sense of a confused and ruined landscape, even the slight chortle of hope that lurks between the words\u2014for the scrupulous effort of telling, in these eleven stories, has a ravishing beauty that belies their substance.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d also like to acknowledge two nominated PRHPS titles!<\/p>\n

\"PerfectionPERFECTION <\/a>by\u00a0Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes (New York Review Books)<\/p>\n

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital \u201ccreatives\u201d exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they\u2019ve turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life\u2014and the life of Berlin itself\u2014begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, \u201cthe brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SadSAD TIGER<\/a> by Neige Sinno, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer (Seven Stories)<\/p>\n

Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather and Sinno started a new life in Mexico.<\/p>\n

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\n Posted: September 15, 2025 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"13 Penguin Random House titles and two PRHPS titles were selected for the National Book Awards longlists! Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-24858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}