The finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards were announced on October 7, 2025, and twenty-five titles have been selected – five books for each category of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Titles, and Young People’s Literature. The five finalists of each category were hand-selected by a distinguished panel of judges, and the final winners will be announced on Wednesday, November 19th, 2025.
Here are the twenty-five finalists of 2025!
Fiction
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine. Published by Grove Press / Grove Atlantic.
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. Published by Knopf / PRH.
The Antidote by Karen Russell. Published by Knopf / PRH.
North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford. Published by A Strange Object / Deep Vellum Publishing.
Palaver by Bryan Washington. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers.
Nonfiction
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. Published by Knopf / PRH
Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to America by Julia Ioffe. Published by Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers.
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux / MacMillan Publishers.
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care by Claudia Rowe. Published by Abrams Press / Abrams.
When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas. Published by Riverhead Books / PRH.
Poetry
The New Economy by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Published by Copper Canyon Press.
Becoming Ghost by Cathy Linh Che. Published by Washington Square Press / Simon & Schuster.
Scorched Earth by Tiana Clark. Published by Washington Square Press / Simon & Schuster.
I Know Some Things by Richard Siken. Published by Copper Canyon Press.
The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith. Published by Scriber / Simon & Schuster
Translated Literature
On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell. Published by New Directions Publishing.
We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers. Published by New Directions Publishing.
The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay. Published by New Vessel Press.
We Computers: A Ghazal Novel by Hamid Ismailov, translated from Uzbek by Shalley Fairweather-Vega. Published by Yale University Press.
Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, translated from French by Natasha Lehrer. Published by Sven Stories Press.
Young People’s Literature
A World Worth Saving by Kyle Lukoff. Published by Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House.
The Leaving Room by Amber McBride. Published by Feiwel & Friends / Macmillan Publishers.
The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri. Published by Levine Querido.
Truth Is by Hannah V. Sawyerr. Published by Amulet Books / Abrams.
(S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi. Published by Versify / HarperCollins Publishers.