2023 National Book Award Finalists


Showing 1 - 13 of 13  There are a total of 13 valid entries on the list.

1. Abyss

Book cover for "Abyss"
Star rating for Abyss
Description:
"Claudia seeks the attention of her melancholic mother, also named Claudia, who occupies her days reading gossip magazines and tending to the family's teeming collection of house plants in their Cali, Colombia, apartment. The mother is particularly obsessed with the deaths of famous women such as actor Natalie Wood, who died in 1981, and tells the narrator they took their own lives to escape from domineering men. The older Claudia married the narrator's...
Book cover for "Beyond the door of no return"
Star rating for Beyond the door of no return
Description:
"A historical novel about a French botanist's search for a mysterious woman who escaped from slavery in Senegal"--
Book cover for "Blackouts"
Star rating for Blackouts
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"From the bestselling, acclaimed, beloved author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective"--
Book cover for "Chain-gang all-stars"
Star rating for Chain-gang all-stars
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black, about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising...
Book cover for "Cursed bunny"
Star rating for Cursed bunny
Description:
"Collection of short stories that blend horror, surrealism, and speculative fiction to take on the patriarchy, capitalism, and reign of big tech"--
Book cover for "The end of drum-time"
Star rating for The end of drum-time
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something...
Book cover for "Fire weather"
Star rating for Fire weather
Description:
"In May 2016, the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, burned to the ground, forcing 88,000 people to flee their homes. It was the largest evacuation ever of a city in the face of a forest fire, raising the curtain on a new age of increasingly destructive wildfires. This book is a suspenseful account of one of North America's most devastating forest fires-and a stark exploration of our dawning era of climate catastrophes"--
Book cover for "Liliana's invincible summer"
Star rating for Liliana's invincible summer
Description:
"In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana's story instead became subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of domestic violence. With Liliana's case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope...
Book cover for "Ordinary notes"
Star rating for Ordinary notes
Description:
Told through a series of 248 notes, this volume explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake of it, touching upon such themes as language, beauty, memory, history and literature.
Book cover for "The rediscovery of America"
Star rating for The rediscovery of America
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.00Ned Blackhawk...
Book cover for "This other Eden"
Star rating for This other Eden
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys' descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated,...
Book cover for "We could have been friends, my father and I"
Star rating for We could have been friends, my father and I
Description:
A subtle psychological portrait of the author's relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee. He was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory...
Book cover for "The words that remain"
Star rating for The words that remain
Description:
"A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Caicero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where the demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo haslong been unable to read. As young men, he and Caicero fell in love, only to have Raimundo's father brutally beat his son when he discovered their affair. Even after Raimundo succeeds in making a life...