2025 National Book Award Longlist - FictionLike this list

10 items

• The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

  Alameddine, Rabih,

  Add The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) to your for later shelf

  Living with his overbearing mother in Beirut, 63-year-old Raja, a gay philosophy teacher, accepts a writing residency in America hoping for escape, only to confront the personal losses, betrayals, and absurdities that have shaped his life across six…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Flashlight

  a Novel

  Choi, Susan, 1969-

  Add Flashlight to your for later shelf

  One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. Louisa is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Wilderness

  a Novel

  Flournoy, Angela,

  Add The Wilderness to your for later shelf

  Five young Black women?—?Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia?—?navigate strained family ties, motherhood, ambition, and identity as they support and challenge each other while forging their adulthoods in New York and Los Angeles across…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sisters

  a Novel

  Khemiri, Jonas Hassen, 1978-

  Add The Sisters to your for later shelf

  Spanning three decades, the lives of the Mikkola sisters—practical Ina, magnetic Evelyn, and rebellious Anastasia—intertwine with Jonas, a man linked to their past, as love, betrayal, and a long-buried secret reshape their understanding of family…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Guardian and a Thief

  Majumdar, Megha,

  Add A Guardian and a Thief to your for later shelf

  In a near-future Kolkata, India, which has been ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other.

• The Antidote

  Russell, Karen, 1981-

  Add The Antidote to your for later shelf

  In a Dust Bowl-era Nebraska town burdened by the Great Depression and its dark past, a witch guarding memories, a grieving athlete, a cursed farmer, and a photographer with a time-bending camera grapple with buried secrets and the consequences of a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Only Sons

  Moffett, Kevin

  Add Only Sons to your for later shelf

  Florida, 1982. A nine-year-old watches as his dead father’s possessions are hauled away: his clothes and tools, his faux-leather recliner. His sensei says it’s a perfect time to turn his weaknesses into weapons. His PE teacher says he runs like a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• North Sun, Or: The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther

  a Novel

  Rutherford, Ethan,

  Add North Sun, Or: The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther to your for later shelf

  Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be theirs: in addition to cruising the Pacific for whale, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Palaver

  a Novel

  Washington, Bryan, 1993-

  Add Palaver to your for later shelf

  The story of a mother and a son, estranged for ten years, reconnecting in the son's chosen city of Tokyo in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

• The Pelican Child

  Stories

  Williams, Joy, 1944-

  Add The Pelican Child to your for later shelf

  The sentences of Joy Williams are like no other—the coiled wit, the sense of a confused and ruined landscape, even the slight chortle of hope that lurks between the words—for the scrupulous effort of telling, in these eleven stories, has a ravishing…Read moreRead more of this annotation