DMPL closed Sunday, March 31

All locations of the Des Moines Public Library will be closed Sunday, March 31 for the Easter holiday.

National Book Award

National Book Award Winners

Five winners have been announced as the 2022 National Book Winners! They are:

Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are American literary prizes administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The award is considered to be among the premier American literary awards. The awards currently honor the best Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature, published each year.

See the full shortlist for fiction, nonfiction, and young people's literature below.

Poetry and Translated Literature Shortlists

Fiction - Shortlist

Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands. They all, like her, are now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them and are searching for meaning in their lives. Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and freedom.

The Birdcatcher

 

Set primarily on the island of Ibiza, the story is narrated by the writer Amanda Wordlaw, whose closest friend, a gifted sculptor named Catherine Shuger, is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her. The three form a quirky triangle on the white-washed island.

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories

Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai ​breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness, Kochai once again captures a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers.

Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She's moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women--soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.

Andrés, a gay Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown in the wake of his husband's infidelity. He finds himself with no excuse not to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, and hesitantly begins to reconnect with people he used to call friends. Captivating and poignant; a coming-of-age story about the essential nature of community, The Town of Babylon is a page-turning novel about young love and an examination of our social systems and the toll they take when they fail us.

Nonfiction - Shortlist

Meghan O'Rourke's incisive new work speaks to an urgent subject: the epidemic scale of autoimmune disease - even greater with the advent of 'Long Covid' - and where we go from here. Blending lyricism, candor, and empathy, O'Rourke reveals complexities about the struggle with chronic illness and autoimmune conditions, and offers new reasons for hope, as well as a new framework for thinking about infectious disease and autoimmune response going forward.

An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South to understand America. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation.

Breathless is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.

A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.


 

Young People's Literature - Shortlist

When a child goes missing from the Orphan House in the town of Stone-in-the-Glen, the mayor suggests the kindly Ogress is responsible, but the orphans do not believe that and try to make their deluded neighbors see the real villain among them.

Sixteen-year-old Mexican American Yami Flores starts Catholic school, determined to keep her brother out of trouble and keep herself closeted, but her priorities shift when Yami discovers that her openly gay classmate Bo is also annoyingly cute.

On October 16, 1968, during the medal ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics, Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner in the 200-meter sprint, raised his black-gloved fists to protest racial injustice inflicted upon African Americans. In his first-ever memoir for young readers, Smith looks back on his childhood growing up in rural Texas through to his stellar athletic career, culminating in his historic victory and Olympic podium protest.

Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. They come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts, they understand each other the way no one else does. In All My Rage, Sabaa Tahir delivers a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness, both tragic and poignant.

Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen visits her estranged grandparents, who own and run a Chinese restaurant in Last Chance, Minnesota; as her visit lengthens, she makes unexpected discoveries about her family's history and herself.