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November 22, 2024 
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| Percival Everett, awarded the prize for fiction, said seeing so many people gathered together to celebrate literature gave him a sense of optimism. Karsten Moran for The New York Times |
Dear fellow readers,
At this week’s National Book Awards, the fiction prize went to the novel that was tipped to win: “James,” Percival Everett’s dazzling reimagining of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Our critic Dwight Garner wrote in his review that “it should come bundled with Twain’s novel,” and added, “It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love.” (If you’ve already read the book, listen to our book club discussion on our podcast.)
The Times has been covering the National Book Awards since their debut in 1950, when the fiction prize went to Nelson Algren’s “The Man With the Golden Arm,” which was also the heavy favorite going in. The paper described it as “hard to read” and reported, “One of the judges, peppery, Irish-born Mary Colum, commented, ‘Half of the books suggested for the prize should never have been published.’”
If you have time, tell us what you’re reading! (We may publish your response on our Letters page, or feature it in an upcoming newsletter.) You can email us at books@nytimes.com.
Tina Jordan
Deputy Editor, The New York Times Book Review
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THIS WEEK IN THE BOOK REVIEW |
 | | Charles Burns/Pantheon |
How a Gen X Graphic Novelist Reinvented the Romance ComicTo fully understand Charles Burns’s remarkable graphic novel, “Final Cut,” you have to look closely at the way in which it was rendered. By Sam Thielman |
 | | ARTGEN / Alamy Stock Photo |
nonfiction John Singer Sargent Painted Them. London Society Talked.Jean Strouse’s brisk, wise “Family Romance” takes on the painter’s relationship to the Wertheimers, a vast Jewish clan he immortalized on canvas. By Walker Mimms |
 | | Balint Zsako |
Fiction Haruki Murakami’s New Novel Doesn’t Feel All That New“The City and Its Uncertain Walls” features all the author’s signature elements — and his singular voice — in a story he has told before. By Junot Díaz |
 | | Georgie McAusland |
Fiction 2 Novels Filled With Christmas MiraclesTwo families navigate a pivotal holiday season that transforms their lives. By Jen Doll |
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