Welcome to Literary Award Season

Summary

The Book Review Podcast – “Welcome to Literary Award Season”
The New York Times | Host: MJ Franklin
Date: November 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this special episode, The New York Times Book Review convenes editors and critics to reflect on the just-concluded “first wave” of literary awards season, which saw winners announced for the 2025 Booker Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, and National Book Awards. Host MJ Franklin is joined by colleagues Emily Akin, Jumana Khatib, and Dave Kim for a lively, unscripted conversation about how these prizes shape the literary landscape each year, what surprised them about this season’s selections, and what the awards mean for readers, authors, and book culture.

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Key Themes and Insights

1. The Mood of Literary Award Season (00:39–04:52)

• Panel’s One-Word Descriptions:

  • Mystified (Jumana & Emily)
  • Curious (MJ)
  • Unpredictable (Dave)

• Reason for Consensus:

  • This awards cycle felt chaotic and hard to predict. Major books didn’t stick in public consciousness, and there was little overlap between prize lists compared to previous years.
  • The process of sorting through longlists and shortlists felt more opaque than ever.

Notable Quote:

“You look at the long lists, you look at the short list, you compare the Booker, you look at the National Book Awards, and sometimes there's just no overlap, and you just want to know what's going on inside the heads of those jurors.”
— Jumana Khatib (03:55)

2. Theories and Attitudes Toward Literary Prizes (07:40–16:09)

• Prizes as Necessary Controversy:

  • Jumana references James English’s “Prestige Economy,” positing that prizes exist in part to be derided, thus reifying both their authority and the outsider status of so-called “true art.”
  • The constant unpredictability—especially at the National Book Awards—is by design, keeping the conversation lively and critical.

• Function for Readers:

  • Awards are discoverability tools before anything else. Sometimes they spotlight obscured works; sometimes they represent the literary “horse race” no reader needs.

Notable Quote:

“Prizes exist for us to hate them. That's the way they're supposed to work. … And one of his great examples is Toni Morrison, in 1987, was overlooked for the National Book Award. … That is the point. It's as if it ratifies her greatness not to be given that award.”
— Jumana Khatib (07:40)

• Celebrating Discovery:
  • Awards create opportunity to champion the overlooked, not just the obvious bestsellers.
  • Best-of lists and prizes are informational signposts; they should inspire debate, not dictate taste or reading agendas.

Notable Quote:

“I feel like that's the joy of loving books or any type of art—getting to say to someone, I just read this, this is great, you're gonna love this. … And that's what these awards do.”
— MJ Franklin (14:17)

• Archivist Value:
  • Prizes’ archives—recorded lectures, judges’ rationale—serve as invaluable resources for understanding literary history and authorial intent.

“It is so helpful to go back and read those… The Nobel Prize has a robust archive…”
— MJ Franklin (16:29)

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In-Depth on Major Prizes

3. The Booker Prize: Flesh by David Sola (19:56–29:00)

• Panel Impressions:
  • Emily: LOVED the win—novel praised for its minimalism, “participatory” reading experience, daring form, and the monotonal hero Istvan (“most passive but hunky Hungarian guy you’ve ever seen”).
  • Dave: Admired the Hemingway-esque subtext, weight in what’s left unsaid, everyday scenes charged with repressed emotion.

Notable Quote:

“To me, it makes sense. … I don't think I've ever read a book like it. … You're trying to meet him there. It's like talking to an introvert at a party who, like, really doesn't want to be at the party.”
— Emily Akin (19:56–21:41)

• Jumana & Dave: Differences among finalists mainly in style (minimalist, epic, psychological), but a noted thematic convergence on internal/domestic dramas and psychological portraiture.

Notable Topics:

• No sweeping “big social novel” or genre experimentation on the shortlist this year.

• Discovery: Seascraper by Susan Choi (about a shrimper)—critical buzz despite not making the shortlist.

• Conversation about Popularity and Perception:

  • Some surprise at the popularity of Katie Kitamura’s Audition (an “opaque, intentionally so” novel)—and discussion about how online and critical fervor can defy traditional charge of “pretentious” shortlists.

Notable quote:

“I'm surprised that it's popular because I think the book is bad. I think the book is great. … But I was surprised at the popular fervor around it.”
— MJ Franklin (27:39)

• International Note:
  • “It’s been a standout year for Hungarian writers.” Both Booker (David Sola) and Nobel (Laszlo Krasna Horkai) went to Hungarians.

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4. The Nobel Prize: Laszlo Krasna Horkai (29:01–38:03)

• Overview:
  • Laszlo Krasna Horkai’s win was both expected and, in a sense, “surprising because it was not surprising” (Dave). He’s long been on Nobel-watch lists.
  • His work: Difficult, Melancholic, master of the long sentence, often bleak but with flashes of wit and affirmation.

Notable Quote:

“They have long, winding sentences. They're often called bleak and dystopian, melancholic. But … there is something very reaffirming about his work that I think people overlook. And there's something very funny about it.”
— Dave Kim (30:07)

• Entry Points for New Readers:

  • Sátántangó—his “masterpiece,” a bleak fable about a conman in a dying Hungarian village.
  • The Melancholy of Resistance—Dave’s personal favorite, praised for masterfully expanding small moments to larger truths (“…all normal expectations went by the board and one's daily habits were disrupted by a sense of ever spreading, all consuming chaos…” – read aloud at 35:00).
  • Harsh 2566 (or 07…)—his most recent, and possibly most approachable, novel (noted for being a single sentence).

• Panel’s Experience:

  • Emily shared a friend’s unexpected emotional connection to Krasna Horkai. Dave performed a dramatic reading for the group.
  • Discussion of how his sentences hypnotize—boringly mundane, then suddenly profound.

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5. The National Book Awards (39:35–49:34)

Winners & Panel Reaction (39:53–41:18)

• Fiction:
  • The True Story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother by Rabia Alamuddin
    • A total surprise to panelists—not on many “award radar” conversations.
    • Emily, who profiled Alamuddin, shared rich biographical context: expatriate Lebanese Druze, late debut, complex relationship to Arab and Western literature, comic sensibility, lives “to ruffle feathers,” and delivered a memorably irreverent speech.

Notable Quote:

“He thanked his gastroenterologist and his psychiatrist and his drug dealers in his speech. So, like, that gives you a sense of his flav.”
— Emily Akin (44:43)

• Nonfiction:
  • One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
    • Less surprising—marked departure from El Akkad’s fiction, “credù coeur” for Gaza and Palestine, blends polemic with personal testimony.
    • Panel hails its clarity, political urgency, and resonance with readers.

Speech Moments:

• The translation prize recipient gave her address in Spanish “because it makes fascists angry.”
• Roxane Gay, Literarian Award winner, advocated for the “global majority of writers.”

Panel Discussion

• National Book Awards as Discovery Machine:
  • Often functions as a true wildcard, surfacing books and authors beyond the mainstream buzz.
  • The fiction shortlist highlighted the panel’s surprise—the titles didn’t match the books dominating critical conversation all year (48:01).
  • The range in tone (comic, e.g. Alamuddin, to tragic, e.g. Yi Yun Li’s memoir finalist) underscored the jury’s wide remit.
  • Panel agrees this pluralism—even if mystifying—is generative.

Notable Quote:

“That's not to say that they weren't great, but I feel the energy had gone to other books throughout the year. … One thing I love about the National Book Awards is … it's this kind of gathering ground for literature at large.”
— MJ Franklin (48:59)

• Awards Night Atmosphere:
  • Emily relished the sense of literary community and ritual at the NBAs—watching legendary writers mingle, the “spirit of the mission,” and even the catering.

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Memorable Moments

• Emily’s vivid, tongue-in-cheek descriptions:

  “Imagine like the most passive but hunky Hungarian guy you’ve ever seen in your life.”

• The classic Nobel lament:

  “Tolstoy never won the Nobel... That’s why he’s great.”

• The recurring panel refrain:

  “These awards should inspire conversation and debate and then we should move on.” — Emily Akin (16:09)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:39–04:52: Awards season mood—chaos, unpredictability
• 07:40–16:09: Why prizes matter, how to read lists, the function of discovery
• 19:56–29:00: Deep dive—Booker Prize, Flesh and the shortlisted titles
• 29:01–38:03: The Nobel: Laszlo Krasna Horkai’s legacy, what to read first
• 39:53–47:31: National Book Awards—overview of winners, discussion of fiction and nonfiction
• 48:01–49:15: Pluralism and surprise at the NBAs; value as literary community gathering

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Conclusion

This episode of The Book Review Podcast offered a witty, searching, and at times irreverent roundtable on the perplexities and joys of literary award season. Panelists celebrated how prizes provoke debate, highlight overlooked gems, and sometimes baffle even professional critics. The conversation ranged from vigorous defense of the value of lists, to literary theory, to gleeful teasing about author names and genres, to emotional moments of book discovery. As the season concludes, listeners are left with a rich sense of what makes literary awards meaningful—and why the best thing about them may be the conversations they spark.

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Recommended For:

• Listeners who want to catch up on what happened in awards season.
• Readers seeking new discoveries beyond mainstream book talk.
• Anyone who wonders: “How do critics actually feel about the value of literary prizes?”

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Notable Quotes Recap:

“Prizes exist for us to hate them. That's the way they're supposed to work.” — Jumana Khatib (07:40)

“That's what these awards do. … It's as a bell to corral everyone.” — MJ Franklin (14:17)

“I just want to be left alone.” — Emily Akin (11:44)

“He thanked his gastroenterologist and his psychiatrist and his drug dealers in his speech.” — Emily Akin, on Rabia Alamuddin (44:43)

“We just go in and we just rush in and get our seats. It's something so simple. And yet, I don't know, I find I found it just a perfect description.” — Dave Kim, on Krasna Horkai (35:55)

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Happy reading, and until next awards season, keep the debates—and the discoveries—going!

Transcript

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[MJ Franklin]

Hello, and welcome to the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and this week we are doing something different. We have just wrapped up book awards season. The winners of the 2025 Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, and National Book Awards have all been announced. I feel like we're just swimming in finalists and long lists and books and all that good stuff. And so I wanted to get together a panel of trusted readers, my colleagues here at the Book Review, and just sort through what do we make of it all, how do we regard these prizes, what do these awards signal for the state of literature in 2025? And then more specifically, what are these books, who are these authors, what are these finalists, do we like them, etc. So that's what we're here to do today. This is a bit of an experiment. It's just kind of like an open conversation. It's chatty. We don't have a set direction. We're just reacting to the season of awards. And embarking on this adventure with me are a panel of my esteemed colleagues. First we have Dave Kim. Hi, I'm Jay and Emily Akin. Hi, I'm Jay and Jomana Khatib.

[Emily Akin]

Hi.

[MJ Franklin]

Thank you so much for going on this adventure with me. Again, we are just reacting to the end of book award season.

[Dave Kim]

Can I just interrupt and say that I actually think it's the beginning of book awards season? I think technically, yes, it's the end of 2025 and therefore the end of the 2025 book awards. But I think book awards tend to honor the books from a particular year. And so I would say that the Booker is actually the first or one of the earlier book awards that honors the books from 2025 and the books, the book awards like the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, those happen early next year or actually even mid next year. And those all still are honoring 2025 books that were published in the year 2025. So I think the season actually starts right around now or Maybe a little earlier and ends around May or June with the Pen Faulkner's, I guess, in May and whatnot.

[MJ Franklin]

This is why I gathered this panel. Already reframing us, but I guess I wanted to pull everyone together because I feel like there's such a concentrated energy around book awards now. Maybe we're coming to the end of the first wave. And I feel like now we're thinking about. As the year comes to a close, as this first wave comes to a close, we're thinking about the great books of the year. And with this first wave, I guess I just want to ask, how are we feeling? If there's a word that describes this season of the book awards, what's the word?

[Emily Akin]

Is that what we want to start with?

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah, let's start there.

[Jumana Khatib]

Broadly speaking, I'll take the bait. Yeah, a little mystified.

[MJ Franklin]

Mystified, Totally.

[Emily Akin]

Totally. That's the exact. That's the proper word for this season.

[Jumana Khatib]

You don't think that's melodramatic?

[MJ Franklin]

I don't think so. My word was curious. What about you?

[Dave Kim]

Mine was close. It was unpredictable.

[MJ Franklin]

Okay, so our words for the award season, around the table, they were mystified twice. Curious, unpredictable. Tell me more. Why are we feeling this way?

[Jumana Khatib]

You know, you look at the long lists, you look at the short list, you compare the booker, you look at the National Book Awards, and sometimes there's just no overlap, and you just want to know what's going on inside the heads of those jurors. Your favorite book might be on the long list, and then it drops off the short list. And it. They don't understand it.

[MJ Franklin]

My theory is that it's. Because this year I feel like it's just been a weird year in books in general. There. Nothing seemed to stick. There were big books that came out but fell by the wayside immediately. There were small books that really stuck around in certain corners. Things were super viral for certain communities, and then didn't get any attention anywhere else. I feel like it's a weird year for books, and that means every award has this open Runway to play and experiment and assert their own taste.

[Jumana Khatib]

Or do you think it's really always like this? And it was the exception that James was a frontrunner from such an early time last year. We were spoiled by that. And Martyr, too, I think.

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[Emily Akin]

I do think that James is a total exception in the sense of being commercially viable, obviously worthy. It just hits so many marks. And I do think each prize has slightly different metrics that they use. Even giving, even taking into account the changing jury pool. But James just seems like a total flash or strike of. What am I trying to say? Total one of a kind, a lightning.

[Jumana Khatib]

Bolt, you know, in what is really a chaotic situation where anything can go.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah. So I agree. I think mystified, curious, unpredictable are the perfect words. But I think for a variety of.

[Emily Akin]

Reasons, see, the book Art to me is usually more legible. The National Book Awards remain a black box that I will never be permitted to understand. Whoever makes those decisions comes from the Bermuda Triangle and goes back to it and never explains himself.

[MJ Franklin]

So I need you to unpack this for me. Tell me more.

[Dave Kim]

They're always different people.

[Emily Akin]

Well, they are always different people. So it's just. It's basically. What is that? Like a writer's colony. Totally impenetrable writers colony. And that's a very fair point. Whoever is leading the jury that year, I actually have. I feel like I understand the taste of what's going on with at least a fiction finalist this year, because I know, I think, who the chair of the jury is. But other years I don't have that insight anyway.

[MJ Franklin]

Wait, I'm going to go to you, Dave, because you said not mystified, you said the word unpredictable.

[Dave Kim]

I don't mean that in a bad way. I feel like I genuinely am not sure what to expect. I think the Nobel Prize winner, Laszlo Krasna Horkay was surprising in that he is not a surprising pick. And I've gotten so used to the Nobel Prize highlighting someone that I hadn't thought about in a long time or had never even heard of and was expecting that, rather than the person who has been consistently a frontrunner in the betting odds for that prize for years finally getting his due. And so it was unpredictable in the sense that it was totally predictable. And the Booker, I felt was. Went with. Not with a safe choice, with something that was a little bit of a curveball. And I really like that, too.

[Emily Akin]

Also, just in case listeners are not aware, they actually do have, I guess, professional odds makers that put out their predictions for the Nobel every single year. I think it's Ladbrokes, which I can't believe I'm allowed to say at work. And it's crazy because there are. You're totally right, Dave. There are always these, like, perennial possibilities. And then they always throw can shue or whatever. Maybe one year will be Cannes year. I don't know. Yeah, it's always funny to see what the odds are.

[Jumana Khatib]

Can I throw in a theory about prizes that's a little bit provocative and this is. I don't know, Dave or Jumana or mj, whether you know about James English, who's an English professor, I think, at UPenn, wrote a book called the Prestige Economy About Awards about 15 years ago. And it's really great. And his argument is that prizes exist for us to hate them. That's the way they're supposed to work. It's a very Bourduian, as in the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it's a very Bourdurian argument about cultural capital. And his thesis is that prizes are part of the market and cultural institutional system. And so to confer value on an author for his book is to ratify the existing market and system. And that goes against our fantasies about great true art, which is supposed to exist outside this capitalist system. And so we love to hate them. And one of his great examples is Toni Morrison, in 1987, was overlooked for the National Book Award. Some book that nobody's ever heard of called Paco's Story, won that year. Dave, do you know the.

[Emily Akin]

Still. Never heard of it.

[Jumana Khatib]

Never heard of it. And then the National Book Critics Circle Award also. This is for Beloved, by the way. Okay, wow. And people really complained. And he said, well, that is the point. It's as if it ratifies her greatness not to be given that award. And anyway, I thought that was a really. It's an interesting, provocative book.

[MJ Franklin]

How do we feel about that theory?

[Emily Akin]

I'm in favor. I mean, I usually default to whatever Emily says. So long as Pierre Bourdieu is getting. Is with us in the room.

[Jumana Khatib]

Just throw in a French philosopher and that shuts everything down.

[Dave Kim]

Yeah, I agree. I agree with the outcome of that, but I don't know that that was intentional or it's an intentional conspiracy that they're going to find the book that is gonna be the most, you know, is gonna be the counterpoint to the true art of that year. And I often do find the National Book Awards, at least in recent years, to be a wild card and almost. And it feels there is some feeling that it's intentional, that they really want to stir things up. With the exception, I think, of last year, which James won for fiction. And I think James was. If there's any book that really SW the awards last year, it was that one. It won pretty much every single major prize, and rightfully so. I think it was excellent. But, yeah, for whatever reason, I think the booker has become the sort of default of, I guess, the gatekeepers of literature. Whereas the National Book Awards has Tried to strike a balance, I think, between the ivory tower and the masses, and has come up with some pretty unpredictable selections in the past few years. I have to say.

[Emily Akin]

I have a book, the Jason Mott. Like, what? It's a good book. It's a great book, but. Yeah. Never would have expected that.

[Dave Kim]

Strange. Yeah. Yeah. And great. And I think it's actually good. It's like Emily said, I think. Yes. Inviting a. Kind of. Inviting us to be angry, inviting us to challenge. What the masters have chosen is part of the fun. It's like the seed of intellectual debate. It's great.

[MJ Franklin]

Can I ask the table. How do you regard these awards? How do you regard the National Book Award, the Booker, the Nobel?

[Emily Akin]

As a reader, as a civilian, I think I would not care. I suppose you can do some divination about what a certain choice says about a certain year. Of course, there are some candidates, like James, where it was like, that is so obviously the book that deserved. Not only because of the merit of the novel itself, but also because it was a capstone for Percival Everett, who had really been toiling in relative obscurity until he wrote James, which had a bigger release. But I just don't know that I would care. I remember, like, Milkman, the Anna Burns novel, only Real, which I love. This came out maybe 10 years ago. I only knew about it because of the Bookers. That's helpful to me.

[Jumana Khatib]

That's a service.

[Emily Akin]

That's a service. But, like, otherwise, I don't know that I would be doing the, like, horse race. Who's up, who's down? I just want to be left alone. I just want to be left alone.

[MJ Franklin]

Is honestly what Emily, Dave, do you agree?

[Dave Kim]

Yeah. We work in the industry, you know, it's kind of our job to. But how do you separate your civilian life from your reading life when it is your job? I guess it. I care in the sense that I want to know what the conversation has coalesced around, but I don't care for myself in the same way that I don't really care about the Oscars. It's interesting, and I will take a look at it, but it's not something that will dictate my agenda, my reading agenda for the next however many months.

[Jumana Khatib]

A few thoughts. I guess I feel like scientists are gonna find the part in our brain that's obsessed with list making and ranking, because I do think it's an irresistible human compulsion, as much as it makes no sense. And we complain and hear at the Book Review about having to make to rank books and make a obsessed with it. A few things though, I do feel like these prizes register differently. To me, the Nobel is a kiss of death. Once you're like up on that pedestal, you're mothballed. And I actually would put before this group the question, is there a Nobel laureate who went on to write a great book after being given the Nobel? It just seems maybe Toni Morrison, I think she wrote Mercy maybe, but it's hard to think of people. And so whereas I think I agree with Jomana Melkman or even here at the National Book Awards, I'm looking at the fiction list. There's a small press title that I am not familiar with. I mean, a book can really be elevated and find an audience, whereas good luck, Laszlo. But will people be buying your books?

[Emily Akin]

I've seen a lot of copies of Satantango around Brooklyn lately. Although apparently it's pronounced shot and tango.

[Jumana Khatib]

I will not be saying ever again.

[MJ Franklin]

Can I take the seat? As the optimist in the room, of course. I. I don't know if I would have tapped into awards season and all of these awards in the way that I do now if it weren't for my job. But I am very glad that I have tapped into it because of this idea that you've just mentioned of discovery. I feel like there are a bunch of books that I would not have read like Milkman, had it not been elevated for these prizes. And I'm thinking about, I'm going to reference another podcast, but a few years ago, our colleague Paro Segal, who was at the Book Review at the time as a critic, went on the long form podcast and it was right around list making season time, it was like end of year. And the host asked her, do you care about these lists? It matters a lot for other people, but how do you feel about it? And her answer was, she cares tremendously. Because it's another chance to make a case for a book that might have slipped through the cracks and to elevate it to readers. And I feel like that's the joy of loving books or any type of art of getting to say to someone, I just read this, this is great, you're gonna love this. Or I read this, this is not getting enough shine. I'm gonna elevate that. That's what these awards do. And even when you agree or disagree, you then start having those conversations of, actually, the National Book Award was wrong. This is the book that you should be reading right now. And I love that. I feel like so much of our reading is Solitary and compartmentalized. And I love these awards as not just a proclamation of this is the best, but as a bell to corral everyone. Am I being Pollyanna about this?

[Emily Akin]

No. All of us here are part of the voting body for the 10 best. I think we all experience that what you're talking about. Exactly like. And take the onus of that. MJ and I really went head to head about a specific book that unexpectedly I was blindsided. I know. Well, I. Well, anyway, we'll save that for another episode that's coming later. But I do agree with you and I think Parl's point is very well taken. And that is the most optimistic view of a list or listicle one could ever hope to have. I think awards should inspire conversation and debate and then we should move on. We should not completely structure our reading life around them. We should use them as informational signposts and then go about our merry lives. That's how I feel.

[MJ Franklin]

I love that approach.

[Jumana Khatib]

I'm gonna back you both up because I know our best books list isn't announced yet, but one of the books that excites me the most on it. My excitement is growing. Cause it's not on a lot of other lists. And that makes me feel really good. I feel like that is a book that will be a discovery. So I love all the books.

[MJ Franklin]

I love that little teaser. Can I say one other thing that I love about book awards season and these prizes? I think it's taken for granted how valuable the archives are for all of these prizes. The Nobel Prize has a robust archive of Nobel lectures. They record the reactions when they call up the writer to tell them that they won. It is so helpful to go back and read those. I actually did that for our we do not part conversation. Our book club conversation early in the year. Because last year Hong Kong won the Nobel. And getting to go back and read her lecture about what she's been thinking about as her her catalog has grown and how she is thematically moved is an invaluable gift. It is so helpful. And similarly for the National Book Awards for the Booker, you can go back and especially for the Booker, read the judges citations of why they're saying that they love these books. That's the part that I really love and find so helpful. Not just like Orboro is the best book of the year, but like Orbital is the best book because it's doing blank. And this is how it impacted us. And that starts that conversation that I really love. We are going to continue our conversation, but First, I think we should take a quick break.

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[MJ Franklin]

And we're back. This is the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm talking to my colleagues Emily Akin, Jumana Khatib and Dave Kim. And we are talking about all things book. Aw. Before, we were talking about just the state of the awards overall, the season of awards. And now let's dive into specific prizes and let's start with the Booker prize.

[Emily Akin]

All right. I will anoint myself with the honor of going first because I love flesh and I was thrilled that this book won. To me, it makes sense. So flesh is imagine Bartleby, the scrivener from Hungary and. No, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. Okay, okay. All right. Or don't. Anyway, so imagine like the most passive but hunky Hungarian guy you've ever seen in your life. And this man obviously has a lot of interiority that he just can't access. Nobody's given him the keys. And he goes through life, he serves in combat, he moves to London. He's a bouncer. Then all of a sudden he has this sort of nouveau riche moment where all of a sudden he's stretched out on a pool chaise. I don't think I've ever read a book like it. In terms of just how a lot of readers have commented on how monosyllabic his dialogue is. The refrain is, okay, okay, okay, okay.

[MJ Franklin]

I kept picturing Pete Davidson in those Chad SNL sketches where people are fawning over him and he's just, okay, okay, sure.

[Emily Akin]

I think the form of this book is what is really exciting to me. David Sola is very confident in terms of just picking you up and plopping you in another stage of life and letting the story go from there. And I can imagine that there was some hair pulling and hand wringing that went into this book. But it's so elegant. It's very memorable, and I think it's very participatory, because as a reader, you're trying to project yourself into Istvan. That's his name. You're trying to meet him there. It's like talking to an introvert, which, of course, none of us are at a party who, like, really doesn't want to be at the party. It really involved a lot of me as a reader, and I thought that was fantastic.

[Dave Kim]

I wouldn't say it was my favorite book on the Booker shortlist, but I did really admire it. I thought it reminded me a lot of vintage Hemingway in that so much of its weight comes from what is not said and what is between the lines. And you have these entire exchanges of dialogue where the real communication that is happening has nothing to do with the actual words of dialogue on the page. And I just found that really fascinating. It reminded me of the, like I said, Hemingway, his short story Hills Like White Elephants, which was about this couple that is just talking about mundane matters. But really what is at the core of the story is this is them negotiating an operation that's understood to be an abortion. And you would not know that if you just took the dialogue at face value. And I found that to be the case with flesh, with just whole sections of what seem to be just mundane daily chores. But underneath there is a sort of glaringly obvious tension, pain or repressed desire or all manner of different really interesting human conditions. So it was great.

[MJ Franklin]

Emily, were you surprised that Flesch won?

[Jumana Khatib]

I don't know, because again, I have to. When you look at the list of the finalists, there is such diversity of style and form. And the land in winter, that's so interesting.

[Dave Kim]

I felt the exact opposite.

[Jumana Khatib]

Well, the Land in Winter is a kind of old fashioned psychological novel. Beautifully precise. And then you have Katie Kitamura, who's. It's a very taut abstract and of a novel. And then you have Flesh, this other pared down, really stripped down, minimalist, hyper controlled performance about which I had some reservations. And then Sonya, the Loneliness of Sonya and Sunny, this sprawling, maximalist, sensual epic.

[MJ Franklin]

Dave, you said though that you disagreed, that you thought that the styles were similar.

[Dave Kim]

No, I actually take that back because I do agree that stylistically they're very different. But I thought that it was interesting in how similar the subject matter was across all of them, which. All of them are these rich studies of internal life and they deal with these domestic dramas with family, with married couples fracturing or facing a kind of existential crisis. And so we don't really get that big fat political epic or something that.

[Jumana Khatib]

Gets into social novel. There's no wheels and everything, or something.

[Dave Kim]

That gets into a genre. They're really very much these, for lack of a better word, domestic dramas that are very stylistically different, but deal, I think, with many of the same themes.

[MJ Franklin]

That's really interesting and I love looking at the list holistically and that's why I wanted to bring everyone together. And my question for the table is, do we think that is a sign of the fact that there are all these quiet domestic stories? Is that a sign of the judging committee or. Or is that a testament to the year in books?

[Jumana Khatib]

Can you think of a big social novel? See, I was trying to think what were the novels that weren't domestic dramas that were really accomplished literary, like the.

[MJ Franklin]

Director or anything historical, really.

[Dave Kim]

Yeah, or like some sci fi. There are so many novels set in the future and dystopian environments that reflect the kind of political environment.

[Jumana Khatib]

Ian McEwan.

[Dave Kim]

That's a real, I think, literary trend of the past, even two, three, four years that we didn't see in this crop.

[MJ Franklin]

Dave, you mentioned that it wasn't your favorite. Was there another book that you were rooting for?

[Dave Kim]

I really enjoyed the Rest of Our Lives, the Ben Markovitz. I really liked the Loneliness of Sonja and Sunny as well. I thought. I actually thought that was going to win. It would have been, I hate to say, safe choice because it's anything but a safe book. But it is that sort of old fashioned and just in a wonderful way like that, that kind of long Russian epic that you just want to sink into. And it's such a hard book to put down.

[Jumana Khatib]

Don't forget, Tolstoy never won the Nobel. That's also in James English's book. First Nobel was 1901. Tolstoy was alive. They had nine more years to give it to him and they never did. That's why he's great. And the first nine winners, you've never.

[MJ Franklin]

Even heard of justice for Tolstoy.

[Dave Kim]

Let's do a whole episode on all the writers who did not win.

[Jumana Khatib]

My point.

[Emily Akin]

Yeah, there'll be a Collins.

[Jumana Khatib]

So the Russian epic that doesn't win may be the great book is the point.

[MJ Franklin]

Is there a book that you were rooting for? Emily, you just mentioned the Land in Winter.

[Jumana Khatib]

I do love the book. The book surprised me. I just picked it up, frankly, off the galley shelf. I think it was bumped up. I think the pub date was moved forward because it was a Booker finalist. I hadn't read our review. I don't think it had come out yet. So the book was totally unknown to me. I actually like a lot of the books on this list. I realize we haven't mentioned Flashlight by Susan Choi. That was another finalist. I haven't read that novel. I guess maybe the Karen Desai. The Loneliness of Sonya and Sonny. I like a little bit more than Flesh. I have some reservations about Flesh, but I think it's a really controlled performance and a risky one. Which was the theme of David Sloy's Booker acknowledgement speech was he was really talking a lot about what it meant to reward a risky book. It is a risky book.

[Emily Akin]

Now, based on how people were talking about Seascraper, which didn't even make it to the short list. This is a book about the interior life of a shrimper, which sounds. If you asked Claude, that sounds like a joke.

[MJ Franklin]

I know.

[Emily Akin]

What is going to win the Booker this year. Give me a fictional plot of what's going to win the Booker this year. It's going to be like, oh, it's going to be a sea crusted shrimper in the middle of the ocean. You're like, yeah, okay. But now when you listen to the way the judges have talked about that book and just the critical reception to it, I'm very keen to read something. I would. I love to eat them. Don't know if I want to read about catching them, but I'm excited. Now.

[MJ Franklin]

Can I tell you one book that I was really surprised by how popular it was and that is Audition by Katie Kiramura.

[Emily Akin]

Same.

[MJ Franklin]

I'm surprised that it's popular because I think the book is bad. I think the book is great. I love that book. I'm surprised because it is so opaque, intentionally so. You're never sure what's going on. There's this big twist and there's little resolution. But I saw a lot of people stumping for it, and I feel like in past years, just like online, I saw people stumping for it. And I feel like in past years, one of the criticism that the Booker Prize gets and a lot of these prizes get are, oh, they're just giving us pretentious literary stuff that I can't sink my teeth into. And I feel like Audition feels like one of those things.

[Jumana Khatib]

Technical, abstract, in some ways, anyways.

[Emily Akin]

Abstract.

[MJ Franklin]

I think that book is great. But I was surprised that the popular fervor around it.

[Jumana Khatib]

It's also finalist for the National Book Award. The only book that was on both lists. That's kind of extraordinary.

[Emily Akin]

As much as I loved Audition, and I do think it was one of the standout books I read this year, I don't think it was longlisted for the National Book Award.

[MJ Franklin]

It wasn't. It didn't make the list.

[Jumana Khatib]

You're kidding.

[Emily Akin]

But there is one commonality that I'm seeing this year, and the answer is in Central Europe, because it's been a standout year for Hungarian writers.

[MJ Franklin]

It truly has been.

[Jumana Khatib]

You are right.

[MJ Franklin]

Jomana, David Soloy and Laszlo.

[Emily Akin]

Our man Lazlo. Yeah.

[Jumana Khatib]

Extra points if you can say his whole name for us.

[Emily Akin]

Laszlo Krasnohorkay. How was that?

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[Jumana Khatib]

Sounds good to me.

[MJ Franklin]

I'm sad that this is an audio, not visual medium because all of our eyebrows went up, like, yeah, that's pretty, right?

[Dave Kim]

That's good.

[Emily Akin]

I have so much affection for this man. The more I learn about him. He was born on the border of Romania and he. He looks like a. He looks like the dog from the Friend. And he's just, like, somehow really good at. He seems like he has the world's most demented sense of humor that I would love to just be next to for a day.

[MJ Franklin]

I feel like I'm gonna be the stand in for the reader who knows nothing. Cause I am the reader who knows nothing. Who is Lazlo Krashna Horkai? Did I say that?

[Emily Akin]

I think Dave should answer this.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah. Who is he? Tell me about his Nobel win.

[Emily Akin]

He's our correspondent for masculinity.

[Dave Kim]

I will humbly take that mantle. Krasno Hawkeye has been a perennial Nobel contender for a decade, and he's writing in the tradition of Thomas Bernhard. But I think you could also Go back to the heavy hitting Russians like Gogol and Dostoevsky. He has a reputation for these difficult books about the absurdity of humanity. They are. They have long, winding sentences. They're often called bleak and dystopian, melancholic. But I think that's his reputation. And I did note that the Nobel committee cited. I like their citation. Which was. Which was. He won this for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art. And I thought the last bit is a little corny, but I think it really gets at what he's doing. It's not just the sort of apocalypse, it's not just the darkness and bleakness. But there is something very reaffirming about his work that I think people overlook. And there's something very funny about it. There's something very bright, actually, even amid the darkness. And I think we don't need to be reminded that the world is a dark place. But I think we often forget that humans have this remarkably unique ability to just pull order from the chaos and to try to find beauty in even the darkest places. And I think Krasnok's work is really representative of that and really captures that well. He can really zoom in and out with his writing, his sentences. His sentences are his currency. He can do so much in a single sentence that can sometimes last for a page or more or even in some cases an entire book, and will fit in clauses and subclauses and can take something so mundane and find the kind of universality of it within. Within the space of a paragraph or in the space of a sentence.

[MJ Franklin]

Dave, you can tell our book one. Arthur, that was great. That was great. I don't know anything about him, but now I'm in, I'm sold.

[Jumana Khatib]

You make him sound more uplifting than the writer who did our appraisal for us after the Nobel Prize, who said in his books it's always October, it's always raining, and human projects are doomed to fail. Which actually made him sound really up my alley, I admit.

[MJ Franklin]

Who was that writer?

[Jumana Khatib]

I think that was Garth Ris Kalberg, wasn't it?

[Dave Kim]

No, but his thesis, though was. He definitely sold the bleakness. But I think his thesis was very much the same. That it. That even amid that, I think this is a writer who understands that there's light to humanity and that we can pull that out of darkness.

[MJ Franklin]

Jomana, Emily, how much did you know about Krashna Horkai before the Nobel win? How familiar were you with him and his work.

[Emily Akin]

Well, luckily he had a book come out in English this year. Hairst 2566 or something.

[Dave Kim]

07 something. Yeah.

[Jumana Khatib]

This is a book that's a single sentence, right?

[Emily Akin]

Yeah, this is remarkable for being a single sentence book. I only knew about him because of our review of it and when the review for us really doubled as a really good overture to who he is and what he's about. And actually I gave that book to a very dear friend of mine and she was, ugh, I only read modernism, you know, like, I don't, I don't want to read this, this garb. And I was like, I think you're gonna like it. And then she finished it in a day and cried, oh my God, that's a win. That's a Nobel laureate.

[MJ Franklin]

That's the best feeling to you when you give a recommendation. And they loved it and they were moved by it.

[Emily Akin]

And I remind her of it daily.

[Dave Kim]

Can I read one sentence of his words?

[Emily Akin]

As long as it's not the whole book.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah, yeah, I know the take of the entire podcast.

[Dave Kim]

So. No, this is actually one of his shorter sentences. It's on the opening page of the book, the Melancholy of Resistance, which was my first exposure to this guy and he really sold me. And this is just a simple scene of a train being late and the train staff finding some coaches that were out of service because they, because of some emergency. And so they, they put the coaches on and the train is delayed by 30 minutes. And that's essentially the situation. And then the crowd gets on and tries to get on their. Get their seats. To tell the truth, none of this really surprised anyone anymore. Since rail travel, like everything else, was subject to the prevailing conditions colon, all normal expectations went by the board and one's daily habits were disrupted by a sense of ever spreading, all consuming chaos, which rendered the future unpredictable, the past unrecallable and ordinary life so haphazard that people simply assumed that whatever could be imagined might come to pass, that if there were only one door in a building it would no longer open, that wheat would grow head downwards into the earth, not out of it. And that since one could only note the symptoms of disintegration, the reasons for it remaining unfathomable and inconceivable, there was nothing anyone could do except to get a tenacious grip on anything that was still tangible. Which is precisely what people at the village station continue to do when, in hope of taking possession of the essentially limited seating to which they were entitled, they stormed the carriage doors, which being frozen up, proved very difficult to open.

[MJ Franklin]

I love that.

[Dave Kim]

It's such a great mundane moment that just opens up and somehow captures the essence. Something about human nature, about this. And it just describes the chaotic world in a microscopic way and then a macroscopic way and tells us something about how human nature has adapted to this disorder.

[Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Advertiser]

Right.

[Dave Kim]

We just go in and we just rush in and get our seats. It's something so simple. And yet, I don't know, I find I found it just a perfect description.

[MJ Franklin]

Experientially, as you were reading that, I found myself so intrigued at first, getting a little bit bored, becoming re. Hypnotized again, starting micro, like this mundane thing going macro. I. Giovanni, you mentioned about flesh, or maybe you, Dave, that it felt participatory, and I felt that about what you just read.

[Dave Kim]

Yeah. And I think a lot of some criticism of him is that he can get a little bit lofty. But I don't care. And it's fine.

[MJ Franklin]

It's actually good still. I love it. Dave, is there a book of Crash on Hawkeyes that you think we should start with? How many are translated into English? Where should. Readers who are new to him, who are diving into his body of work, where should they start?

[Dave Kim]

That's a good question. I feel, weirdly enough, the last book is probably his most accessible, I would say.

[MJ Franklin]

And that's HESH07 something.

[Dave Kim]

Yeah. And the one that won a National Book Award years ago, which was Baron Worked Kaimes Homecoming. That one is a tough one. Satan. Such a. What is it? Satantango. I thought I was.

[Emily Akin]

I think we should just go with Shot and Tongo. Shot and Tongo, Yeah. I'm not saying we're gonna have kids in Park Slope. Name that.

[Dave Kim]

I would say that's his masterpiece. That's his best one, really. But the melancholy of Resistance, I think, is somewhere in between. And that's. It remains my favorite only because it's the one that started it for me.

[MJ Franklin]

Why are you surprised, Ramona?

[Emily Akin]

Well, I just. I'm. It just seems so perfect that, like, Satan Tango is his masterwork. Just so I'm clear, what is the premise of Satan Tango?

[Dave Kim]

It's a bleak, apocalyptic town where a con man comes to town and tries to screw everyone.

[Emily Akin]

Readers.

[MJ Franklin]

You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it.

[Emily Akin]

Actually, I'm interested.

[MJ Franklin]

All right, so that's the Nobel. Let's talk about the National Book Awards. But before we do that, let's take a quick break and reset.

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[Emily Akin]

Are you ready to get spicy?

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[Emily Akin]

Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

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[MJ Franklin]

Try Doritos Golden Sriracha Spicy but not too spicy. Okay, so through podcast magic, we've reset one small change. Dave Kim unfortunately had to leave, so he is not with us for this last segment. Thank you so much, Dave, but you still have me and Emily and Joumana, and let's just dive in. Let's talk about the National Book Awards. So two nights ago, the winners were announced. And what were the winning books?

[Emily Akin]

Okay, I'll take this one. So in fiction, Rabia Alamuddin won for his novel the True Story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother. In nonfiction, Omar El Akkad won for One Day everyone will have always been against this. The poetry prize went to Patricia Smith for the Intentions of Thunder, New and Selected Poems. In Translated Literature, Gabriele Cabezon Camara and her translator Robin Myers won for We Are Green and Trembling. And last but not least, in young people's literature, Daniel Nayari won for the Teacher of a World War II story.

[MJ Franklin]

So my question for the panel is, what do we make of it? Any surprises? Are we happy with the winners? Are we shocked by the winners? Maybe. Let's start off by talking about fiction and nonfiction. What are our thoughts?

[Jumana Khatib]

I think it was a total surprise this time, as it often is with the new National Book Awards.

[MJ Franklin]

Dave did say earlier that the National Book Awards are a wild card. Why were they Surprising this time you.

[Jumana Khatib]

Start talking about books with your co workers, with your friends you follow online, and conversation builds up around particular titles. And it's just always a surprise when none of those books make the title five finalists at the National Book Awards. So it makes it exciting, but it also makes it just feel like a real wild card.

[Emily Akin]

I was much less surprised by the nonfiction winner. To me, that, like, Omar's book felt very much in the lead because that was a book that a lot of people were talking about. And for any listeners that are not familiar with this, this is a really marked departure. For Omar, who is a novelist. He was. This is really like a credu coeur about what's going on in Gaza and in Palestine more generally. And this was a book that I think a lot of people were talking about, especially around the time it came out, which is back in March or April, I think.

[MJ Franklin]

Yeah, there was a huge conversation around that. The book that I remember. And I was. I don't know if I felt surprised that it won. Actually, I do. I feel a little bit surprised, largely because that conversation did feel like it dominated the first half of the year. I feel like it petered out a little bit and I wasn't sure where the judges went to land. I also think it's tapping into a very specific literary tradition, the political tract, the polemic, protest literature, resistance literature. And that has a particular imperative to it, has a particular style to it. So it was one that, given the fervor around it and given, I think it's so clear eyed is the word I keep using, given that it was one that I was rooting for, but I don't know if I thought it would win. And so I was like, pleasantly surprised.

[Emily Akin]

It's a tough mandate that he set out for himself in a lot of ways. Like, Emily, I thought your point earlier about the inciting emotion behind that book was a really good one. Well, it is.

[Jumana Khatib]

It definitely has the qualities of a polemic. It is a polemic, but it's also an intensely personal book. He folds in a lot of his own story. He's born in Egypt, he grew up in Canada. He's worked as a journalist and seen a lot of horror around the world and really wants to shatter this idea that what happened in Gaza is what happens to other people. He's just an extremely eloquent writer. So I think readers probably really resonated with that.

[MJ Franklin]

And he gave a really powerful speech too. Correct. Emily, you were there.

[Jumana Khatib]

I was there. And I would say that the evening felt More political, some more overtly political than it sometimes has. His speech was overtly political, as were other speeches. That night, the winner of the award for work in translation gave her speech in Spanish, because, as her translation later then explained in English, speaking in Spanish makes fascists angry. And Roxane Gay's speech was also political, Really a rebuke to. And a kind of advocacy speech for the. For what she calls the global majority of writers. Yeah.

[MJ Franklin]

Roxane Gay won the Literarian Award, and that's an award given to someone for distinguished service to the literary community. Can we talk about the fiction winner?

[Emily Akin]

Absolutely.

[MJ Franklin]

What do we know about the fiction winner? I was caught off guard. I know so little about this book and this author, and I'm excited to dig into it, but.

[Emily Akin]

So I really thought fiction was anybody's game this year. I was taken aback by the composition of the shortlist. So then at that point, it's hands are off the wheel. Like, we see what happens. But I'm really tickled because I happen to really like Rivia's work. Part of this is also just a sort of, I don't know, Phoenician affiliation. Rivia, He's a Lebanese. He's Drew's. He's coincidentally from the same village that my family is, which I didn't know until.

[Jumana Khatib]

Oh, my God. I know.

[Emily Akin]

I didn't know this until I profiled him for his last novel. And he's lived a totally fascinating life. And if you listen to his speech or even just look at the picture, he had this crazy tie on with Nancy, the cartoon character. And he's such a character. He thanked his gastroenterologist and his psychiatrist and his drug dealers in his speech. So, like, that gives you a sense of his flav. But something to know about Rubia is that he's always been. He's gonna hate that I say this, but, like, he has always been a writer that has somehow ruffled feathers, right? So he picked up and moved to the States. He lived in San Francisco for decades. And he didn't publish his first novel until he was, like, 40. And he helped start a gay soccer team when he was living in San Francisco. And within a couple years, like, half the team had died. My God. And part of. I think he would agree with this, like, part of being Lebanese, particularly of his vintage. He lived through the civil war. A lot of Lebanese, if not every single Lebanese person on earth, has real psychic scars, even if they didn't live through the worst of the fighting. But Rabia witnessed a lot of it, too, he was so fed up, he told me, with anything that was considered gay literature at the time, anything that was considered Arab literature, let alone anything considered Lebanese literature. And somehow he has alienated all of his constituents. Well, where he told me, the Westerners think I'm writing for Arabs. Arabs think I'm writing for the West. I don't care about any of them. So his latest book, the True Story of Raja the Gullible and His Mother. Personally, this is not my favorite one of his books, but I am delighted to see him recognized because he's been putting out books and books and really actually challenging himself to try new approaches for a long time. And so it's nice to see that rewarded.

[MJ Franklin]

I think we mentioned earlier in the conversation that discovery is a really big aspect and a really big value of award season in general. And for me, this is one of those discovery picks. I'm excited to discover his work and go it back into his catalog.

[Emily Akin]

So this is the story. Raja is, and this is the preferred term in the book, the quote, neighborhood homosexual. He's, like, in his 60s, and he still lives with his mom, and he's a very popular high school teacher at his alma mater. He teaches philosophy. And to me, this is the most bohemian, mountain Arab coded novel I could think of. It turns into an exploration of memory and trauma and diaspora and all this stuff, but it's also just like, very funny on the sentence side.

[MJ Franklin]

That sounds hilarious. Neighborhood homosexual. I will be adopting that tag.

[Emily Akin]

Yes. I could never come up with such a phrase.

[Jumana Khatib]

It's interesting that even among the finalists, though, we have this comic novel set in Lebanon with the hilarious characters of the mother and the son and their dynamic. And then we have a. Had a. One of the finalists was Yi Yun Lee's memoir, a memoir of her son's death. She lost both her children to suicide. And again, it's just that kind of range just made me think that everything is fair game for this jury. How is this gonna go? There was no way to know.

[MJ Franklin]

There's no way, because there are separate juries that pick nonfiction fiction in all of the categories. But what you said made me think of something that we've talked about. Being mystified and stumped and all of these things, which I definitely feel about the list this year. I just was shocked by all of the books, partially because they just weren't on my radar as award contenders. That's not to say that they weren't great, but I feel the energy had gone to other books throughout the year. One thing in addition to the wild card discovery aspect I love about the National Book Awards is the idea that it's this kind of gathering ground for literature at large. Again, there's the other awards are for one book and one author. These have five categories. The long lists are they give the literary an award and a lifetime achievement award. For me, the National Book Awards isn't just a here is the best books of the year, but also here is a way for the community to gather, which I love.

[Emily Akin]

Well put, mj. Whenever I go to the National Book Awards and also watching it at home on my couch is amazing now that they stream it. But yeah, whenever I'm there, I'm I'm in Cipriani Wall street. Like you're paying attention to the spirit of the mission and I paying attention to the catering.

[MJ Franklin]

Oh my God. Next time we have to get catering in the studio for our gathering to talk about.

[Jumana Khatib]

You guys missed a good filet mignon.

[MJ Franklin]

Well, unfortunately, that's all the time we have. I just want to say, Joumana, Emily, Dave, wherever you are, thank you. This has been super, super fun.

[Jumana Khatib]

Thanks for having us.

[Emily Akin]

Mj.

[MJ Franklin]

Again, one of the things I love about book award season is how it sparks conversation. And this conversation conversation is exactly what I've been looking forward to. Thank you to everyone who's listening. I hope you continue talking about the best books of the year. We'll have our best books of the year episodes, all that stuff down the line. But until next time, happy reading.

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