National Book Award

The National Book Awards are awarded each fall by the National Book Foundation. Categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Young People's Literature, Translated Literature, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

2019 Winners:

Fiction Trust Exercise by Susan Choi In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving "Brotherhood of the Arts," two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed — or untoyed with — by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.	Nonfiction The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts....It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.
Poetry Sight Lines by Arthur Sze Sight Lines moves through space and time and brings the disparate and divergent into stunning and meaningful focus. In this new work, Arthur Sze employs a wide range of voices — from lichen on a ceiling to a man behind on his rent--and his mythic imagination continually evokes how humans are endangering the planet; yet, balancing rigor with passion, he seizes the significant and luminous and transforms these moments into riveting and enduring poetry.	Young People's Literature 1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler 1919 was a world-shaking year. America was recovering from World War I and black soldiers returned to racism so violent that that summer would become known as the Red Summer. The suffrage movement had a long-fought win when women gained the right to vote. Laborers took to the streets to protest working conditions; nationalistic fervor led to a communism scare; and temperance gained such traction that prohibition went into effect. Each of these movements reached a tipping point that year....Sandler traces the momentum and setbacks of these movements through this last century, showing that progress isn't always a straight line and offering a unique lens through which we can understand history and the change many still seek.
Translated Literature Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai (Trans. Ottilie Mulzet) Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin — like figure, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who returns at the end of his life to his provincial Hungarian hometown. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he longs to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. Confusions abound, and what follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town’s alternately drab and absurd existence.