Quiz: Which Book On the National Book Award Longlist Should You Read?

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Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman

It sounds similar you’re looking for a publication that volition transport you! In these beautiful, vivid stories, Newman explores the affectional lives of modern and humanities women surviving successful Alaska. Characters woody with harsh landscapes, analyzable families, unfulfillable longings, and the ghosts of their pasts.

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

You should read Shutter, a gripping page-turner that’s portion thriller, portion haunting supernatural shade story, and portion moving coming-of-age communicative acceptable connected a Navajo preservation successful New Mexico. It stars Rita Todacheene, a forensic transgression lensman who sees the ghosts of past victims, and uses their clues to assistance her lick crimes.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

You’re looking for thing that volition interruption your bosom and enactment it backmost together, thing emotionally susceptible and bitingly real. All This Could beryllium Different is the publication for you! It follows Sneha, a queer Indian pistillate conscionable retired of college, trying to unrecorded and emotion and past and possibly adjacent thrive successful late-stage capitalism successful the Midwest.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

You don’t fto genre bounds you, and neither does Ingrid Rojas Contreras! This beauteous memoir reads similar a novel, adjacent though it isn’t. Contreras blends Columbian past with her ain household past and stories into a mesmerizing communicative astir the magic that runs successful her family, representation loss, lineage, and more.

Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges

You’re looking for thing absorbing and challenging and fresh, and possibly under-the-radar, too! In Uncommon Measure, Korean American violinist and writer Natalie Hodges explores time, consciousness, music, and philosophy. She draws connected her ain acquisition arsenic a musician, including her struggles with performance, arsenic good arsenic probe successful quantum physics and neuroscience.

Mummy Eaters by Sherry Shenoda

This unsocial poesy postulation is told from the POV of the author’s imagined ancestor, a pistillate from past Egypt connected her travel done mummification and into the afterlife. Shenoda uses this quality to interrogate modern ideas astir decease and dying, past mythology, the legacies of colonialism, and more.

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft

You’re up for anything, and you’re not acrophobic of large books — and it’s a bully thing, due to the fact that astatine astir 1,000 pages, The Books of Jacob is not for the faint of heart. This sprawling opus is often considered Nobel-prize winning Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s masterpiece, and present it’s disposable successful English. It’s a sweeping epic astir a almighty spiritual person and the ripple effects his actions and beliefs person passim 18th period Europe.

The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes

You’re looking for a amusive and engrossing publication — who isn’t? This heartwarming YA caller is astir 2 queer Mexican American siblings muddling their mode done Catholic school, dealing with analyzable household dynamics, coming out, archetypal love, racism, intelligence health, and more. It’s thoughtful, laugh-out-loud funny, and afloat of joy, though it doesn’t shy distant from hard topics.