2025 National Book Award winners : NPR

When writer Rabih Alameddine accepted his National Book Award for Fiction on Wednesday evening, he thanked his agent, his editor and early readers of his work. He additionally thanked his psychiatrist, his drug sellers and “all gastrointestinal doctors.”

“I guarantee you that I wouldn’t have been able to write a single word in the last 10 years without their help,” he stated. “There would have been no movement.”

Alameddine gained for his novel, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), which is a few philosophy trainer who lives together with his growing older and sharp-tongued mom.

Other winners equally balanced the festive feeling of the evening with heavier world issues. Writer Omar El Akkad gained the non-fiction prize for his e-book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which is a critique of the West’s involvement within the conflict in Gaza. “It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” he stated.

Full listing of winners and finalists under:

Fiction:

Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)  (WINNER)

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief 
Karen Russell, The Antidote
Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther
Bryan Washington, Palaver

Nonfiction:

Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (WINNER)

Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

Poetry:

Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (WINNER)

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy
Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost
Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth 
Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

Translated Literature:

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling. Translated by Robin Myers (WINNER)

Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III). Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier. Translated by David McKay
Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel. Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger. Translated by Natasha Lehrer 

Young People’s Literature:

Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story (WINNER)

Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving
Amber McBride, The Leaving Room 
Hannah V. Sawyerr, Truth Is 
Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin