NEW YORK – American author Percival Everett won the US National Book Award for fiction on Nov 20 for his novel James, a propulsive and slyly funny retelling of American writer Mark Twain’s Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1884) from the perspective of Huck’s companion, an enslaved man named James.
In accepting the award, Everett said that seeing people coming together to celebrate books gave him a sense of optimism during what was, for him, a challenging moment.
“Two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty low, and to tell you the truth, I still feel pretty low,” he said in an oblique reference to the results of the US presidential election, which was won by former president Donald Trump. “As I look out at this, so much excitement about books, I have to say, I do feel some hope.”
Published in March, James drew rapturous reviews from critics.
“It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labour of rough love,” American book critic Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, calling the novel a masterpiece that deserves to be read alongside the book that inspired it.
The ceremony, which drew 800 guests to a black-tie dinner at Cipriani Wall Street, marked the 75th National Book Awards.
The award for non-fiction was given to anthropologist Jason De Leon for Soldiers And Kings: Survival And Hope In The World Of Human Smuggling, an immersive account of the nearly seven years he spent embedded with human smugglers on the US-Mexico border. The book depicts traffickers as both victims and perpetrators of violence, often suffering from the same poverty as migrants.
In accepting the award, which he dedicated to “everyone on the migrant trail”, Dr De Leon denounced the incoming Trump administration’s proposed crackdown on immigration and other policies.
“I will not accept the dystopian American future,” he said.
The National Book Award, established in 1950, is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the US. Past winners include William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Louise Erdrich, Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward.
The prize, which is given in five categories – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature – is open to books released by US publishers in the country.
Earlier in 2024, the National Book Foundation announced that it was dropping the citizenship requirement, opening up the prize to immigrants and others who have made their home in the US.
The foundation also recognised Barbara Kingsolver – the author of nine novels, including The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and Demon Copperhead (2022), which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize – with a lifetime achievement award.
It also honoured W. Paul Coates, publisher and founder of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, with the Literarian Award, which recognises service to the literary community.
The award for translated literature, which was added in 2018, went to Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue. The novel, about a Japanese novelist who travels to Taiwan in 1938 and forms a relationship with her young female interpreter, was translated from Mandarin by Lin King.
The award for young people’s literature was given to Shifa Saltagi Safadi for Kareem Between, a coming-of-age novel that centres on a Syrian-American boy struggling to fit in.
The poetry prize was awarded to Lena Khalaf Tuffaha for Something About Living, a collection that explores the erasure of Palestinian history.
Tuffaha, who decried the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, said she was honoured to accept the award as a Palestinian American on “behalf of all the deeply beautiful Palestinians that this world has lost, and in honour of all the miraculous ones who endure”. NYTIMES
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