  • search-icon

Introducing the 2017 National Book Award Winners

A searing history of Russia, family dramas, and more nab the coveted literary prize.

Yesterday, one of the most prestigious literary prizes was given to four writers at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. The trophy comes with an additional $10,000, and finalists each receive $1,000. Among the winners was previous recipient Jesmyn Ward, who took home this year’s Fiction prize for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. It’s the Toni Morrison-esque story of a struggling Southern family, haunted by the ghosts of their past as they roadtrip across Mississippi.

The Nonfiction category went to Russian native and journalist Masha Gessen for The Future is History. Lauded for her damning biography of Putin, The Man Without a Face, Gessen returned to her home country to examine life in a post-Soviet world. The story unfolds through the eyes of four individuals, all of whom see their dreams of democracy crushed beneath a totalitarian regime.

Robin Benway received the award for Young People’s Literature. Her novel, Far from the Tree, follows three biological siblings who, after leading separate lives with their adoptive families, finally reconnect. A moving story of home and familial love, it’s already been compared to NBC’s hit drama This Is Us. 

Last but not least, Frank Bidart won the Poetry award for Half-light, which includes nearly half a century's work in addition to a new collection, Thirst. Whether he's writing of murderers or mental illness, Bidart never flinches from the darkness of the human psyche—and Half-light is no exception.

Read this year's National Book Award winners by downloading them today!

Fiction

Buy Sing, Unburied, Sing at Amazon

Sing, Unburied, Sing

By Jesmyn Ward

"A searing, urgent read for anyone who thinks the shadows of slavery and Jim Crow have passed, and anyone who assumes the ghosts of the past are easy to placate." —Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You

Sing, Unburied, Sing

By Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction

Buy The Future is History at Amazon

The Future is History

By Masha Gessen

"A remarkable portrait of an ever-shifting era…Gessen weaves her characters’ stories into a seamless, poignant whole. Her analysis of Putin’s malevolent administration is just as effective…a harrowing, compassionate and important book." —San Francisco Chronicle

The Future is History

By Masha Gessen

Young People's Literature

Buy Far from the Tree at Amazon

Far from the Tree

By Robin Benway

"Family issues are neither airbrushed nor oversimplified. From the first page to the last, this compassionate, funny, moving, compulsively readable novel about what makes a family gets it right." —Kirkus Reviews

Far from the Tree

By Robin Benway

Poetry

Buy Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 at Amazon

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

By Frank Bidart

"Relentless and ever willing to face his demons, no matter how terrifying...an almost overwhelming bounty, a permanent book." —Publishers Weekly

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

By Frank Bidart

Looking for more award-winning books? Sign up for the Early Bird Books newsletter and get the best daily ebook deals delivered straight to your inbox.

Created on 16 Nov 2017

scroll up
https://earlybirdbooks.com/2017-national-book-award-winners
earlybirdbooks.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-04
75845
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:6EPHW5FP7JTKGHDFLHZDDILYAMDVKD43
<urn:uuid:b04cdbdb-a3bf-4cf2-8c0a-4a840e3c2ec0>
2019-01-23T04:47:01Z
34.193.85.180
text/html
sha1:DWZM37NBITB2C7ROJP4ITAELLKV54SUR
<urn:uuid:397fc979-640d-44ec-83ff-76150213f665>
https://earlybirdbooks.com/2017-national-book-award-winners
response
<urn:uuid:b8c6cfca-4954-4eb4-b7e6-e5b50f34740b>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-04
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-154-0-44.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/