It is official; James by Percival Everett has won the National Book Award for Fiction.
This may have been the easiest pick for the award in a long time. Everett wrote a modern classic, which is a retelling of the Mark Twain classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told by the perspective of Finn’s runaway companion named James. If any other novel besides this won, I would have been very surprised.
In his acceptance speech, Everett said that he was feeling down because of the recent presidential election and this raised his spirits.
“Two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty low, and to tell you the truth, I still feel pretty low,” he said. “As I look out at this, so much excitement about books, I have to say, I do feel some hope.”
The novel was released in the spring of 2024 and critics and the public loved it. The hype around the novel never died down and the reviews about the novel hinted that this might be the best novel released this year.
Jason De León won the award for nonfiction for his book “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling. The book is about his account of spending almost seven years he spent embedded with human smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border. The book showcases the smugglers as victims and perpetrators of violence and showing how the smugglers aren’t that different from the migrants they help smuggle.
In De León’s acceptance speech, he denounced the Trump administration’s hard stance on deporting immigrants and other policies that he didn’t agree with. “I will not accept the dystopian American future,” he said.
Barbara Kingsolver, the winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Demon Copperhead was awarded a lifetime achievement award. The National Book Award also honored W. Paul Coates, publisher and founder of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, with the Literarian Award, recognizing services to the literary community.
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I read “James” a few months ago and thought it was a good read. We could probably use more novels set in the 19th century written from the minority viewpoint. Everett’s “Dr. No” was a fun satire of the James Bond movies. It was the excellent movie “American Fiction” that attracted me to his novels and I’m glad it did.