NEW YORK (AP) — A new novel by M.T. Anderson and a pair of novels in verse were among those on the National Book Awards longlist in young people’s literature. Also Wednesday, an Italian novel translated by Jhumpa Lahiri was on the inaugural longlist of works from other languages.
Anderson and illustrator Eugene Yelchin collaborated on “The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge.” That book and nine others in the young people’s category, diverse both in style and in the background of the authors, were announced by the National Book Foundation.
Earlier this year, the book foundation announced a new category for translation, an art form long underappreciated. Wednesday’s longlist included Domenico Starnone’s “Trick,” translated by Lahiri, and nine other books (eight fiction, one non-fiction), originally in languages from Japanese and Norwegian to Russian and Arabic.
Longlists for poetry, nonfiction and fiction will be announced later this week. The lists will be narrowed to five on Oct. 10. Winners will be announced Nov. 14.
Also on the young people’s list were Joy McCullough’s “Blood Water Paint” and Elizabeth Acevedo’s “The Poet X,” both written in verse. Besides “The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge,” two other books include illustrations: Elizabeth Partridge’s “Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam” and Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s graphic memoir “Hey, Kiddo.”
Others cited Wednesday were Leslie Conner’s “The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle,” Christopher Paul Curtis’ “The Journey of Little Charlie,” Bryan Bliss’ “We’ll Fly Away,” Tahereh Mafi’s “A Very Large Expanse of Sea” and Vesper Stamper’s “What the Night Sings.”
In translation, the longlist also included Roque Larraquy’s “Comemadre,” translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary; Dunya Mikhail’s nonfiction “The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq,” translated from Arabic by Mikhail and Max Weiss; Perumal Murugan’s “One Part Woman,” translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan; and Yoko Tawada’s “The Emissary,” translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani.
A pair of novels written in Norwegian made the list: Hanne Orstavik’s “Love,” translated by Martin Aitken, and Gunnhild Oyehaug’s “Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life,” translated by Kari Dickson. Also included were Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights,” translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft; Negar Djavadi’s “Disoriental,” translated from French by Tina Kover; and Tatyana Tolstaya’s story collection “Aetherial Worlds,” translated from Russian by Anya Migdal.
