Each year, the National Book Awards recognize and reward excellence in literature in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. Established in 1950, and overseen by the National Book Foundation, the award is considered one of the most prestigious literary prizes. 

A longlist of titles nominated for the awards is announced in the fall, followed by a list of finalists ahead of the final announcement in November.  The 2020 award winners were announced in a virtual ceremony on November 18 which you can watch here.

The Livingston Public Library is pleased to have nearly all of the 2020 National Book Award finalists and winners in the fiction and nonfiction categories in our physical and digital collections. Dive into some of the best books of the year!

Fiction Winner

• Interior Chinatown : a novel by Charles Yu

Fiction Finalists

• A children’s Bible : a novel by Lydia Millet
• Leave the world behind : a novel by Rumaan Alam
• Shuggie Bain : a novel by Douglas Stuart

Nonfiction Winner

• The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X by  Les Payne and Tamara Payne

Nonfiction Finalists

• My autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
• The undocumented Americans : a homecoming by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• Unworthy republic : the dispossession of Native Americans and the road to Indian territory by Claudio Saunt

Past Years Awards

Since you may very well find yourself in a queue for this year’s favored titles, you can perhaps keep yourself sated in the meantime with these National Book award winning works of previous years, that should make for worthy reads as well. 

 Listed below are winners in fiction and nonfiction of the past five years available in book or ebook format with your Livingston Library card.

Fiction Winners

• Fortune smiles : stories by Adam Johnson (ebook version)
• The friend by Sigrid Nunez (ebook version)
• Sing, unburied, sing : a novel by Jesmyn Ward (ebook version)
• Trust exercise : a novel by Susan Choi (ebook version) 
• The underground railroad by Colson Whitehead (ebook version)

Nonfiction Winners

• Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (ebook version)
• The future is history : how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen
• The new Negro : the life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
• Stamped from the beginning : the definitive history of racist ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (ebook version)
• The yellow house by Sarah M. Broom (ebook version)

-Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian