To invoke this year’s most persistent platitude: We need good books now more than ever. From speculative fiction by Marlon James, to Carolyn Forché’s memoir 15 years in the making, this year’s National Book Award finalists reflect today’s ever-innovative literary landscape: Diverse perspectives are celebrated and old genre mores are thrown out the window. Literary luminaries like James, Susan Choi, László Krasznahorkai, and Laila Lalami are joined by rising talent including Akwaeke Emezi and Julia Phillips, and nearly all the finalists are first-time nominees.

The 25 books, which fall under Young People’s Literature, Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and the recently created Translated Literature category, introduced in 2018, were selected by a judging panel comprising authors (Danzy Senna, Kiese Laymon, and Jeff VanderMeer among them), indie booksellers, critics, translators, and educators. In all but Translated Literature, only books by U.S. citizens—or longtime American residents currently pursuing citizenship, or legally unable from doing so—are considered. Winners will be announced on November 20.

Here, in an exclusive announcement, are the 2019 National Book Award finalists.

Illustration by Katherine Moffett.

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Make Me a World / Penguin Random House

Indiebound

Amazon

Jason Reynolds, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster

Indiebound

Amazon

Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

Kokila / Penguin Random House

Indiebound

Amazon

Laura Ruby, Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers

Indiebound

Amazon

Martin W. Sandler, 1919 The Year That Changed America

Bloomsbury Children’s Books / Bloomsbury Publishing

Indiebound

Amazon

Illustration by Katherine Moffett.

TRANSLATED LITERATURE

Khaled Khalifa, Death Is Hard Work

Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price

Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Indiebound

Amazon