Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" on April 18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File The Canadian Press)
Salman Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which delves into his near-fatal stabbing in 2022, has been nominated for the prestigious National Book Awards. Also recognized is Canadian poet Anne Carson, highly regarded for her work, with a nod for her latest collection Wrong Norma.
The National Book Foundation, the organization behind the awards, revealed the longlists for nonfiction and poetry on Thursday. Earlier in the week, lists for young people's literature and translated books were announced, with fiction nominees set to be unveiled on Friday. On October 1, the longlists will be narrowed to five finalists in each category, with winners to be celebrated at a ceremony in New York City on November 20.
Rushdie, now 77, has been a literary giant since his 1981 novel Midnight's Children. He gained global attention—and controversy—after the 1988 release of The Satanic Verses, which led to a fatwa being issued against him by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. While Knife is Rushdie’s first National Book Award nomination, he was previously ineligible for the honor due to his British citizenship. He has lived in the U.S. since 2016 and became a citizen the same year.
Other nonfiction titles that made the longlist explore themes of faith, identity, and global challenges. Notable works include Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, Rebecca Boyle’s Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, and Jason De León’s Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.
Additional nonfiction nominees include Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, Kate Manne’s Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, Ernest Scheyder’s The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives, Richard Slotkin’s A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, Deborah Jackson Taffa’s Whiskey Tender, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders.On the poetry side, in addition to Carson’s Wrong Norma, the longlist includes Pulitzer Prize-winner Dianne Seuss for Modern Poetry, Fady Joudah’s (...), Dorianne Laux’s Life on Earth, Gregory Pardlo’s Spectral Evidence, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ Silver. Other nominees are Octavio Quintanilla’s The Book of Wounded Sparrows, m.s. RedCherries’ mother, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Something About Living, and Elizabeth Willis’ Liontaming in America.
