The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has officially announced its shortlists for the best books of 2025, per lithub.com. Spanning six core categories, the 30 finalists represent what NBCC President Adam Dalva describes as “singular and striking” works that interrogate modern life and broaden creative horizons.
In addition to the main categories, the NBCC revealed finalists for the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book and the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Prestigious individual honours were also confirmed, including the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award for Frances FitzGerald and the NBCC Service Award for Elizabeth Taylor.
“Each of these books is an artistic achievement,” Dalva stated. “Especially in this difficult time, every one of these writers and translators deserves to be celebrated, and to be widely read.”
See the 2025 shortlists:
Autobiography
* Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days (Viking)
* Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Scribner)
* Beth Macy, Paper Girl (Penguin Press)
* Hanif Kureishi, Shattered (Ecco)
* Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace (Bloomsbury)
Biography
* Mayukh Sen, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (W.W. Norton)
* Alex Green, A Perfect Turmoil (Bellevue Literary Press)
* Amanda Vaill, Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters (FSG)
* Ashley D. Farmer, Queen Mother: Audley Moore (Pantheon)
* Carla Kaplan, Troublemaker: The Life of Jessica Mitford (Harper)
Criticism
* Yoko Tawada (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda), Exophony (New Directions)
* Joanna Pocock, Greyhound (Soft Skull Press)
* Quinn Slobodian, Hayek’s Bastards (Zone Books)
* Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Knopf)
* Viet Thanh Nguyen, To Save and to Destroy (Harvard University Press)
Fiction
* Karen Russell, The Antidote (Knopf)
* Katie Kitamura, Audition (Riverhead)
* Solvej Balle (trans. Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell), On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) (New Directions)
* Han Kang (trans. e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris), We Do Not Part (Hogarth)
* Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness (Mariner)
Nonfiction
* Greg Grandin, America, América (Penguin Press)
* Barbara Demick, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove (Random House)
* Karen Hao, Empire of AI (Penguin Press)
* Scott Anderson, King of Kings (Doubleday)
* Gardiner Harris, No More Tears (Random House)
Poetry
* Yuki Tanaka, Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon)
* Rickey Laurentiis, Death of the First Idea (Knopf)
* Kevin Young, Night Watch (Knopf)
* Henri Cole, The Other Love (FSG)
* Tolu Oloruntoba, Unravel (McClelland & Stewart)
Special Awards and Honours
* John Leonard Prize Finalists: Nicholas Boggs, Evanthia Bromiley, Saou Ichikawa, Liz Pelly, Hedgie Choi, Lucas Schaefer.
* Gregg Barrios Translation Finalists: Yoko Tawada, Banu Mushtaq, Hanna Stoltenberg, Neige Sinno, Markus Werner, Olga Ravn.
* Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Rhoda Feng (Winner).
