On Tuesday, October 6, the National Book Foundation will cut its five longlists of ten books each down to five finalists per category. The winners will be announced on Wednesday, November 18, at the 77th National Book Awards ceremony. Before the field narrows, it is worth looking at how many first books made it this far.
By the Foundation's own descriptions, eight of the fifty longlisted books are debuts. Three are on the Fiction longlist, which the Foundation said was drawn from 451 submitted books: two debut novels and a debut story collection. The others are a debut poetry collection, a debut memoir, a translated debut novel and two debuts for young readers.
The Renovation, by Kenan Orhan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Foundation describes Orhan's protagonist as a woman who has migrated from Istanbul to Italy, where she cares for her dying father and her anxiety-ridden husband and becomes absorbed in home improvement projects, until she discovers that her second-floor bathroom "has transformed into a Turkish prison cell—with guards and fellow inmates."
It has been a big season for the book. The Renovation was longlisted for the Booker Prize in July, though it did not make the shortlist announced on September 22. Orhan's first book, the 2023 story collection I Am My Country, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, according to The Pitch in Kansas City, where he lives. In that interview he called himself a fabulist and named Italo Calvino as a major influence.
Critics have been more divided than the prize lists suggest. ArtReview praised Orhan's "ability to mix the light with the heavy, the personal and the political," calling the novel "by turns touching and profound." In The Irish Times, Lucy Sweeney Byrne called it "extremely well-written" and funny "in a satisfyingly absurdist way," but said she found its heroine "a bodiless mouthpiece" for the story of Erdogan's Turkey.
Mad Eden, by Morgan Thomas (MCD)
Thomas's novel, which follows the story collection Manywhere, centers on Ro, a trans health care worker recently diagnosed with autism, and their partner Liam, who live in a secluded cabin in rural Florida. The Foundation says the book "blurs time and genre," interspersing Ro's story with excerpts from an online fantasy story that gives the novel its title. Publishers Weekly called it "brilliant" and "impossible to forget."
Red Ants, by Kimberly Blaeser (Counterpoint)
The Foundation describes Blaeser as a poet and Red Ants as her debut story collection, following contemporary Anishinaabe characters through stories that blend "horror, humor, and the supernatural" to take on advanced technology, "missing and found family, and life on and off of the Rez."
JOAN, by Jake Rose (University of Chicago Press)
Described by the Foundation as a debut collection, Rose's book on the Poetry longlist "reimagines Joan of Arc's life," in the Foundation's words, and transforms "her body, mind, and legacy into a historical framework that explores queer identity and desire," merging biography and autobiography.
Mother Tongue, by Sara Nović (Random House)
Nović is best known as a novelist, but the Foundation describes Mother Tongue as her debut memoir. On the Nonfiction longlist, it traces her hearing loss as a child, her place in the deaf community and her experience raising two sons, one adopted and deaf and one biological and hearing, while examining the history of discrimination against deaf and disabled people in the United States.
My Dreadful Body, by Egana Djabbarova, translated by Lisa C. Hayden (New Vessel Press)
On the Translated Literature longlist, Djabbarova's debut novel follows a young woman from an Azerbaijani family living in Russia who is managing a debilitating neurological illness. Each chapter, the Foundation notes, addresses a different part of the body, a structure that lets the narrator examine "patriarchal violence, chronic pain, and diasporic identity."
The Free Verse Society, by Delali Adjoa, and The Celestial Seas, by T. A. Chan
Two debuts made the Young People's Literature longlist. Adjoa's novel in verse (Peachtree Teen) follows Jae, a teen mom who placed her baby for adoption and wants to keep it secret, and Derek, an athlete coping with his father's death, who clash as the newest members of a school poetry club. Chan's novel (Viking Books for Young Readers) follows Ishara Ming, the only survivor of a spaceship destroyed by a legendary sentient spacecraft, and her ragtag interstellar crew, out for vengeance and adventure.
Eight of the fifty books on this year's longlists are debuts, by the National Book Foundation's own descriptions.
What to Watch on Tuesday
The finalists will be revealed on October 6 with The New York Times. Whatever happens, the longlists have already done what longlists do best, which is to put a handful of first books in front of readers who might not otherwise have found them.
Sources: National Book Foundation, Publishers Weekly, ArtReview, The Irish Times, The Pitch, The Guardian. Book descriptions are drawn from the Foundation's longlist announcements.
Reported by the RedSquibble books desk from the publications and announcements linked in this story.
