Our Five Finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards
Today, the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization, announced the finalists for the 76th National Book Awards. Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are American literary prizes administered by the National Book Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.
We’re honored to share that five Penguin Random House titles and one PRHPS title were selected as National Book Awards finalists! .
The winners will be announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony, which will be broadcast live from Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 8 p.m. EST, free for anyone to view. For more information about the 76th National Book Awards and to register to watch the live ceremony, please visit here.
Fiction
A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF by Megha Majumdar (Knopf; Random House Audio)
In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen.
THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell (Knopf; Random House Audio)
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Nonfiction
ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad (Knopf; Random House Audio)
On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
WHEN IT ALL BURNS: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead; Penguin Audio)
Eighteen of California’s largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term “megafire” to describe wildfires that behave in ways that would have been nearly impossible just a generation ago, burning through winter, exploding in the night, and devastating landscapes historically impervious to incendiary destruction.
Young People’s Literature
A WORLD WORTH SAVING by Kyle Lukoff (Dial Books for Young Readers; Listening Library)
Covid lockdown is over, but A’s world feels smaller than ever. Coming out as trans didn’t exactly go well, and most days, he barely leaves his bedroom, let alone the house. But the low point of A’s life isn’t online school, missing his bar mitzvah, or the fact that his parents monitor his phone like hawks—it’s the weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters meetings his parents all but drag him to.
We’d also like to acknowledge the nominated PRHPS title in Translated Literature!
SAD TIGER by Neige Sinno, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer (Seven Stories)
Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather and Sinno started a new life in Mexico.