5 min readUpdated: Oct 1, 2026 05:05 PM IST
The United States’ National Book Foundation has announced its 2026 longlists for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature.
Winners will be honoured in New York on November 18, at a ceremony where The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie will receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, one of American publishing’s top lifetime honours. His memoir Knife, about the 2022 attack that blinded him in one eye, was also a finalist in 2024. It has since been adapted into a documentary.
Here are five titles to add to your reading list, one from each category.
The Disappearers by Marlon James
The Booker-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) takes us to 1988, where eight men are rehearsing Jamaica’s first gay play. Seeing this as a provocation, a homophobic mob descends on them, killing one of them. Years later, a survivor sets out to find what became of the rest of them in the aftermath of the attack. Each one of them has tried to come to terms with the rage, hatred, grief and fear the attack evoked differently. Some are trying their best to forget what happened; others are gunning for vengeance. In an interview, James said the novel “is based on a violent incident that was rumoured to have happened but was never proven.” One of this year’s most critically acclaimed works of fiction, The Disappearers (Penguin Random House) also made the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist.
The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music by Colin Asher
What do Lead Belly, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur have in common? They are all famous American musicians whose lives and careers were shaped by the criminal justice system. In The Midnight Special, Colin Asher examines how incarceration affected their music—did prisons spark genius or rob it? Audiences love the trope of the rebellious artist, but Asher points out that white artists were able to cash in on their notoriety, while authorities silenced Black artists such as Hope and Lead Belly.
Tree of Knowledge by Victoria Chang
Poet Victoria Chang has won or been nominated for major American awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the PEN/Voelcker Award; she was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. When Chang saw men sawing a eucalyptus tree across the street, the moment spiralled outward in her mind into art, history, and memory, mingling with the creative genius of painters such as Picasso, Joan Mitchell, and Hilma af Klint, whose series gives the book its anthology. The long poem “Eureka” confronts the violent 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from the California town.
To the East of the East by Ping Lu
If you enjoyed Taiwan Travelogue, you might also like Taiwanese writer Ping Lu’s To the East of the East. When Min-Hui’s husband vanishes while pursuing a business deal in China, she moves to Beijing. As she waits for answers, she has an affair with a self-proclaimed human rights activist and lets him read her novel-in-progress about a young Qing emperor trapped in the Forbidden City, spellbound by a pirate merchant’s tales of Taiwanese seas. Weaving Min-Hui’s search, her Beijing romance, and unsent letters from her missing husband, Ping Lu explores the universal hunger for freedom. Jeremy Tiang, whose work has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize, has translated it.
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Life on the Moon by Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr
Written by husband-and-wife author-illustrator team Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr, creators of the Cookie Chronicles and The Real McCoys, Life on the Moon was nominated in the Young People’s Literature category. It follows 12-year-old Leo, who gets the opportunity to join the first Moon colony. But after his family lands, his dad is sent on a mission and never returns. Authorities claim the mission never existed and accuse his father of desertion. Determined to find him, Leo explores the colony and discovers a landscape teeming with extraordinary creatures, baffling behaviours, and strange beliefs.
