NEW YORK – Percival Everett's “James,” his acclaimed retelling of Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” is a fiction nominee for the National Book Awards. The long list of 10 also includes Rachel Kushner's innovative thriller, “Creation Lake,” and novelist-filmmaker Miranda July's exploration of middle age, “All Fours.”
The National Book Foundation released the fiction list Friday, capping a week of announcements in five competitive categories — fiction, nonfiction, poetry,young people's literature, and books in translation. Judges will narrow the lists to five on Oct. 1, and winners will be announced Nov. 20 during a dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when honorary prizes will be presented to novelist Barbara Kingsolver and publisher-activist Paul Coates.
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Two story collections are on the fiction list, Pemi Aguda's “Ghostroots" and Tony Tulathimutte’s “Rejection," and three debut novels, Kaveh Akbar's “Martyr!,” Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s “Catalina" and Sam Sax’s “Yr Dead," which takes place in part outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan. The other fiction nominees are Jessica Anthony's “The Most” and Hisham Matar's “My Friends."