The National Book Award finalists have been announced. They are:

  • Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press/ Grove/Atlantic)
  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner/ Simon & Schuster)
  • Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press/ Penguin Group (USA))
  • Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
  • Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

I intend to read the four novels and a short story collection over the next two weeks. Other than the Doerr, they’re all less than 100,000 words so I should be able to fit them in. Expect reviews over the coming days.