Find Your Next Read Among the 2022 National Book Award Finalists

by Tess Gunty

Set in the post-industrial Midwest, this story of loneliness and community, entrapment and freedom, follows Blandine, who lives with three other teens in a run-down apartment building known as the Rabbit Hutch, as she embarks on a quest for transcendence that culminates in a shocking act of violence.

by Jamil Jan Kochai

A luminous meditation on sons and fathers, ghosts of war, and living history that moves between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora.

by Gayl Jones

On the white-washed island of Ibiza, the narrator, writer Amanda Wordlaw, describes in great detail her peculiar relationship with her closet friend, a gifted sculptor, who is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her.

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Follows a young Indian American woman who is grappling with graduating into a recession, working a grueling entry-level corporate job, and trying to date Marina, a beautiful dancer who always seems just beyond her grasp.

by Alejandro Varela

Returning to his hometown to care for his ailing father, Andres, a gay Latinx professor, decides to attend his 20-year high school reunion where he encounters the long-lost characters of his youth and must confront these relationships to better understand his own life.

by Meghan O'Rourke

Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, the author offers a revelatory investigation into the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases that resist easy description or simple cures.

by Imani Perry

This intricately woven tapestry of stories of immigrant communities, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes and lived experiences shows the meaning of American is inextricably linked to the South—and understanding its history and culture is the key to understanding our nation as a whole.

by Daniel Quammen

The story of the worldwide scientific quest to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Interweaving spellbinding family stories, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, the author shares her inheritance of “the secrets”—the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick and move the clouds.

by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Two Washington Post reporters examine how systemic racism impacted both the life and death of the 46-year old black man who was murdered in broad daylight outside a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin.

by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Interweaving elegy, indictment, and hope into a love letter to California, Look at This Blue examines America’s genocidal past and present to warn of a future threatened by mass extinction and climate peril.

by John Keene

With depth and breadth, Punks weaves together historic narratives of loss, lust, and love. The many voices that emerge in these poems—from historic Black personalities, both familial and famous, to the poet's friends and lovers in gay bars and bedrooms—form a cast of characters capable of addressing desire, oppression, AIDS, and grief through sorrowful songs that "we sing as hard as we live." 

by Sharon Olds

"At the time of have-not, I look at myself in this mirror," writes Olds in this self-scouring, exhilarating volume, which opens with a section of quarantine poems, and at its center boasts what she calls Amherst Balladz (whose syntax honors Emily Dickinson: "she was our Girl - our Woman - / Man enough - for me") and many more in her own contemporary, long-flowing-sentence rhythm. 

by Roger Reeves

In his expansive second volume, Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity—climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy, and loss.

by Jenny Xie

The Rupture Tense begins with poems provoked by the photography of Li Zhensheng, whose negatives, hidden under his floorboards to avoid government seizure, provide one of the few surviving visual archives of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and concludes with an aching elegy for the poet’s grandmother, who took her own life shortly after the end of the Revolution. This extraordinary collection records the aftershocks and long distances between those years and the present, echoing out toward the ongoing past and a trembling future.

by Jon Fosse; translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

Asle is an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbor, Asleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjorgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgangers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions.

by Scholastique Mukasonga; translated from the Frech by Mark Polizzotti

In four beautifully woven parts, Mukasonga spins a marvelous recounting of the clash between ancient Rwandan beliefs and the missionaries determined to replace them with European Christianity.

by Mónica Ojeda; translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

by Samanta Schweblin; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness, or the fallibility of parents. In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise.

by Yoko Tawada; translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani

As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they’re all next off to Stockholm.

by Kelly Barnhill

When a child goes missing from the Orphan House in the town of Stone-in-the-Glen, the mayor suggests the kindly Ogress is responsible, but the orphans do not believe that and try to make their deluded neighbors see the real villain among them.

by Sonora Reyes

Sixteen-year-old Mexican American Yami Flores starts Catholic school, determined to keep her brother out of trouble and keep herself closeted, but her priorities shift when Yami discovers that her openly gay classmate Bo is also annoyingly cute.

by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, and Dawud Anyabwile

On October 16, 1968, during the medal ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics, Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner in the 200-meter sprint, and John Carlos, the bronze medal winner, stood on the podium in black socks and raised their black-gloved fists to protest racial injustice inflicted upon African Americans. Both men were forced to leave the Olympics, received death threats, and faced ostracism and continuing economic hardships.  In his first-ever memoir for young readers, Tommie Smith looks back on his childhood growing up in rural Texas through to his stellar athletic career, culminating in his historic victory and Olympic podium protest.

by Sabaa Tahir

When his attempts to save his family’s motel spiral out of control, Salahudin and his best friend Noor, two outcasts in their town, must decide what their friendship is worth and how they can defeat the monsters of their past and in their midst.

by Lisa Yee

In Last Chance, Minnesota, with her family, Maizy spends her time at the Golden Palace, the restaurant that’s been in her family for generations, where she makes some discoveries requiring her to go on a search for answers.