We’ve talked about about the National Book Awards here at the Free For All, and today, we are overjoyed to bring you the winners, (almost) live from the Cipriani in Manhattan….

(drum roll, please?)…..

Congratulations to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adam Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, and Neal Shusterman!!

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been having quite a banner year, strining together accolades and praise for his memoir Between the World and Me, including receiving a MacArthur ‘genius’ in September, which is awarded for “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work”.  His book is dedicated to his friend, Prince Jones, who was killed by a police officer in 2000, and whose death sits at the heart of this work of being black in America, and carrying the weight of history on one’s shoulders every single day.

Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles, which won the award for fiction, is another success from a writer who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son in 2012.  As Publisher’s Weekly puts it, ““How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel? For [Adam] Johnson, the answer is a story collection, and the tales are hefty and memorable. . . . Often funny, even when they’re wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about.”  Interestingly, his book was actually not among the favorites to win the prize (that distinction apparently went to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies).

Robin Coste Lewis took the award for poetry for her debut collection Voyage of the Sable Venus, which, sadly, NOBLE doesn’t have (yet!), but which deals with the perception of the black female figure in art, and in the world.  In one poem, titled “Venus of Compton”, Lewis presents the title of works depicting black women through forty thousand years of human history in a manner that The New Yorker called “magical…All those women made into serviceable, mute paddles and spoons, missing their limbs and heads, are, by the miracle of verbal art, restored.”  Just as memorable: Lewis dedicated the poem to “the legacy of black librarianship, and black librarians, worldwide” for opening up the world to her, once upon a time.

Last, but by no mean least, we have Neal Shusterman, whose novel Challenger Deep won the American Book Award for ‘young people’s literature’.  His work focuses on a teen who is dealing with the onset of schizophrenia, and trying desperately to balance the worlds inside and outside his head.   Booklist gave it a starred review, saying it is “Haunting, unforgettable, and life-affirming all at once”.  What makes this particular book remarkable, though, is what a personal piece it is–Shusterman based his hero, Caleb, on his son, Brendan, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 16.  Brendan illustrated this book, as well, making this book a beautiful and truly meaningful piece of collaboration.

Congratulations to all these marvelous National Book Award winners, and thank you for sharing your brilliance with us!

We’ve talked before about the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and what a remarkable award it is, and how critically important it is to recognize women’s writing.  Well, it turns out that the Baileys award people, including the dynamic women on the Fiction Board have given us some new reasons to celebrate this award, and all that it stands for in the publishing and reading word.

For the prize’s tenth anniversary–when it was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction–the Fiction Board presented a “Best of the Best” segment on the BBC’S Woman’s Hour, featuring a round-up of the ten winning books of the past decade.  And on Monday, in honor of the prize’s twentieth birthday, the Fiction Board (headed by co-founder and chair Kate Mosse) named a new “Best of the Best” from amongst the Bessie winners of the past decade.  And yes, the award’s name is Bessie, bless her heart.

The award ceremony itself was preceded by two weeks’ worth of programs on Woman’s Hour, including readings from all the winning books, and interviews with the authors that were insightful in an of themselves, but also offered readers the chance to discover these marvelous works–again, and for the first time.  Finally, today, the ceremony itself featured readings from stars like Stanley Tucci and Sheila Hancock, and a celebration of all the diverse, funny, heartbreaking, mind-blowing and intensely creative art that these women have produced in the past ten years.

Before announcing the winner, here is a list of the ten books considered for the “Best of the Best” of the Baileys Prize’s second decade:

Zadie Smith: On Beauty (2006)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun (2007)

Rose Tremain: The Road Home (2008)

Marilynne Robinson:  Home (2009)

Barbara Kingsolver: The Lacuna (2010)

Téa Obreht: The Tiger’s Wife (2011)

Madeline Miller: The Song of Achilles (2012)

A.M. Homes:  May We Be Forgiven (2013)

Eimear McBride:  A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing (2014)

Ali Smith: How to Be Both (2015)

And, after lively discussion from the judges, a public vote, and much speculation, the winner is…..

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie!!!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria, where her father was an statistics professor at the University of Nigeria, and her mother was the University’s first female registrar.  Though she initially studied medicine, she switched to creative writing and moved to the United States in 2003.  Since then, she has presented talks at worldwide forums, including a sensational TED Euston talk entitled “We Should All Be Feminists“.

Her novel takes place during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), and charts the intertwined stories of five characters: the twin daughters of an influential businessman, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy who survives conscription into the Biafran army, during and immediately after the war.  By jumping back and forth in time, Adichie is able to tell a uniquely complex, and yet undeniably human story.  On one level, this is a novel of love, betrayal, and empowerment, while at the same time it deals with broad cultural and political themes, such as the scars of imperialism on Nigeria’s history that can never fully heal, the way the media shaped and, ultimately controlled the Nigerian Civil War, and whether there is any academic, rational way to affect positive change in a society that has been so fully corrupted by western influences.  This is both a tremendously wise book, and a very readable one, that touches at the heart of some issues more precisely than most non-fiction works can.

At the time of its publication, The Washington Post stated that it was a “transcendent tale about war, loyalty, brutality, and love in modern Africa. While painting a searing portrait of the tragedy that took place in Biafra during the 1960s, her story finds its true heart in the intimacy of three ordinary lives buffeted by the winds of fate. Her tale is hauntingly evocative and impossible to forget.”

Muriel Gray, who served as the Chair of Judges for the 2007 award said of Adichie’s work: “For an author, so young at the time of writing, to have been able to tell a tale of such enormous scale in terms of human suffering and the consequences of hatred and division, whilst also gripping the reader with wholly convincing characters and spell binding plot, is an astonishing feat.  Chimamanda’s achievement makes Half of a Yellow Sun not just a worthy winner of this most special of prizes, but a benchmark for excellence in fiction writing.”

For the record, Adichie will be receiving a special Bessie, cast in manganese bronze (and if anyone knows quite what that is, we would love to hear).  You can watch her joyful acceptance video here:

And I’m sure you’ll help the Free For All offer sincere congratulations to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and all the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Winners, for changing our ideas about what fiction is, and what is can do for twenty remarkable years!

I’ll be honest…I’m always a little uncomfortable about “Lists of Best Books”.  There is no way anyone could ever read all the books published in a year (though I am tempted to try…), and there is also no way to measure how  a book will affect all readers, or if a certain book will arrive at the right time to save you, as so many of the best books do.

Nevertheless, Publisher’s Weekly can give you an idea of what books made headlines, made waves, changed the way people think, or changed the ways in which people saw each other.  And those are some pretty neat accomplishments.  So have a look at this list and then stop by and check them out.  And let us know what you think should be a top-picks list for 2015!

Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Books of 2015:

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates: In this book, written as a letter to his teenage son Samori, Atlantic writer Coates reflects on just what it means to be black in America, from a historical, as well as a personal perspective.  “I love America the way I love my family — I was born into it.”  Coates said in an interview with NPR.   “…But no definition of family that I’ve ever encountered or dealt with involves never having cross words with people, never having debate , never speaking directly. On the contrary, that’s the very definition in my house, and the house that I grew up in, of what family is.”

The Invention of Nature : Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World,  by Andrea Wulf: Prussian-born naturalist, explorer, and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) may not be a household name today, but his work was quite a mover and shaker during his time, not only for his diplomatic work, but for his “Humboldtian science”, which held”nature is perfect till man deforms it with care”.  As a result, he has been recognized as the first scientist to consider the possibility of climate change and human influence on the planet.  Andrea Wulf’s biography makes great strides into putting Humboldt’s name back in the books, and making readers realize for just how long humans have been compromising their world.

The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante, trans. from the Italian by Ann Goldstein: Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels have grown wildly popular, and this is the second time that PW has listed them amongst their favorite books of the year.  In this installment, the brilliant, bookish Elena uses details from her own life, and friendship with the dazzling Lila in her work, and recalls all the vagaries, fights, reconciliations, and escapades that have brought them to this point in their lives.

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan: A writer for The New Yorker, and a lifelong surfer, Finnegan recounts his love for–and addiction to–the art of surfing, along with all the friends he’s met and wild adventures that he’s had in pursuit of his love, as well as his struggle to balance all those adventures an encounters alongside a family and successful career.  This book is also being hailed as brilliant travel memoir, as Finnegan recounts the incredible and the mundane places that he’s explored in his drive to find the next big wave.

Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham: This is one of those books that is downright impossible to sum-up briefly, but here goes…Hannaham’s book is a metaphor for addiction (Scotty, one of the narrators, is the actual embodiment of crack), a southern gothic/horror novel (the titular farm that holds the characters captive is simply chilling), and a deeply emotional tale about love, family, and recovery.  To truly get into the complexity of this novel–you’re simply going to have to read it for yourself!

Imperium, by Christian Kracht, trans. from the German by Daniel Bowles: These are the kind of “based on a true story (no seriously, this actually did happen)” books that I love to read: In 1902, a German named August Engelhardt fled his homeland, and founded a sect of sun worshippers that were lived as cocoivores–coconut eaters.  As in, they ate nothing but coconuts.  Kracht envisions this island paradise (located on an island in what was then German New Guinea known as Kabakon, to which Engelhardt brought about 1,200 books), the idealism, and the inevitable disaster that befalls Engelhardt’s attempts to reinvent society in a way that is both haunting and touchingly funny.

Beauty Is a Wound, Eka Kurniawan, trans. from the Indonesian by Annie Tucker: A native Indonesian herself, Kurniawan’s debut novel tells the tale of a prostitute named Dewi Ayu, who rises from her grave after twenty-one years.  Though the tale is bound up in the lives of Dewi and her four daughters, this is also a novel about the destruction, violence, and lasting scars of colonialism in Indonesia’s history, and a love letter to a place, a time, and a culture that is sure to surprise and entrance American readers.

Crow Fair, by Thomas McGuane: PW is hailing this McGuane’s newest release the best collection of short stories to come out this year, and it they are not alone.  This compendium of sixteen stories set in the rugged Montana wilderness, and full of characters who are shaped by its terrain, are by turns terrifying, funny, mysterious, and wonderfully realistic.  Best of all, McGuane is a master at redeeming even the most rascally characters, providing readers with plenty of emotion, in addition to his wonderful landscapes and plotlines.

The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson: There are lots of intellectually, jargon words thrown around in regards to Nelson’s memoirs…it is a work of ‘autotheory’, it challenges ‘homonormativity’….but at its heart, Nelson’s story is about finding love, and a language to talk about it.  Her life and love with queer film-maker Harry Dodge is full of far-flung adventures, and also deeply personal moments of self-realization, and wonderfully sympathetic tales of making and raising a family.

Black Earth : The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder: While Snyder’s book is a story of the Holocaust, it is also about the circumstances that created it, the environmental, the interpersonal, and the political.  And his book is also a warning…that the various climates that we are creating around us today are perilously close to that which existed in the 1920’s and 1930’s, forcing us to confront not only where we have been, but where, precisely, we are headed as a ‘civilization’.

So what do you think, beloved patrons?  Any books you would add to this list?