When author Rabih Alameddine accepted his National Book Award for Fiction on Wednesday night, he thanked his agent, his editor and early readers of his work. He also thanked his psychiatrist, his drug dealers 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 said. "There would have been no movement."
Alameddine won for his novel, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), which is about a philosophy teacher who lives with his aging and sharp-tongued mother.
Other winners similarly balanced the festive feeling of the night with heavier global concerns. Writer Omar El Akkad won the non-fiction prize for his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which is a critique of the West's involvement in the war in Gaza. "It's very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide," he said.
Full list of winners and finalists below:
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
Copyright 2025 NPR
