Aleksei Navalny Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

New York Times

21-03-2025

A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, 'Patriot,' as a masterpiece and 'an eyewitness account of history, and a work of moral imperative and literary intelligence.'
Hisham Matar's novel 'My Friends,' a story about a Libyan man living in exile in London, won the fiction prize.
The awards, which were announced Thursday at a ceremony at the New School in New York City, are among the most highly regarded literary prizes in the United States. The winners are chosen by book critics instead of committees made up of authors or academics, which is how most literary prizes are administered.
The organization, which dates to 1974, is made up of more than 800 critics and review editors. This year's awards recognized works published in 2024 and were open to authors of books published in English in the United States.
Along with awards in categories like biography, criticism, autobiography, fiction and poetry, the group also recognizes individuals and organizations for their work in support of literary culture.
This year, Lauren Michele Jackson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of 'White Negroes,' received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The award, named in honor of a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, goes to an N.B.C.C. member for literary criticism.
The service award was given to Lori Lynn Turner, the associate director of the New School's creative writing program.
Sandra Cisneros, the author of the groundbreaking novel 'The House on Mango Street,' whose work helped pave the way for Mexican American and other Latino writers, received the lifetime achievement award.
Third World Press, one of the largest independent Black-owned presses in the U.S., which was founded in 1967 and has published major Black writers such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Gwendolyn Brooks, won the Toni Morrison Achievement Award.
Below is a list of this year's award-winning titles.
'Patriot: A Memoir' by Aleksei Navalny, translated from Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, is a memoir Navalny started writing after surviving a near-fatal poisoning with the lethal nerve agent Novichok in Siberia in 2020, and continued writing while in prison, where he died at age 47.
'Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar' by Cynthia Carr, is a biography of the transgender actress and star of some of Andy Warhol's films.
'There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,' is Hanif Abdurraqib's best seller about how sports can anchor us to a sense of place, told through the story of a 2002 basketball game in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up.
'My Friends' by Hisham Matar, follows a young Libyan man who is granted asylum in London after he is targeted for attending an anti-Qaddafi protest, and has to rebuild a new life exile.
'Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space' by Adam Higginbotham, is a propulsive and devastating account of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the causes behind the disaster.
'Wrong Norma' by Anne Carson, is a collection of verse that often reads like essays or prose, and covers such wide ranging subjects as snow, Joseph Conrad, Flaubert, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus and Carson's father.
'A Last Supper of Queer Apostles' by Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, is a selection of essays about political and cultural icons including Che Guevara and Elizabeth Taylor, the messy aftermath of following the collapse of authoritarian rule under Augusto Pinochet and living through the AIDS epidemic in Chile.
'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir' by Tessa Hulls, is a graphic memoir that tells the story of the author's family, folding in reflections on Chinese history, immigration, and trauma.