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Jason De León received the nonfiction award for “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.”
Nov. 20, 2024, 10:21 p.m. ET
Percival Everett won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday for his novel “James,” a propulsive and slyly funny retelling of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of Huck’s companion, an enslaved man named James.
In accepting the award, Everett said that seeing people coming together to celebrate books gave him a sense of optimism during what was, for him, a challenging moment.
“Two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty low, and to tell you the truth, I still feel pretty low,” he said, in an oblique reference to the results of the presidential election. “As I look out at this, so much excitement about books, I have to say, I do feel some hope.”
Published this spring, “James” drew rapturous reviews from critics. “It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love,” Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, calling the novel a masterpiece that deserves to be read alongside the book that inspired it.
This year’s award ceremony, which drew 800 guests to a black-tie dinner at Cipriani Wall Street, marked the 75th National Book Awards.
The event kicked off with a piano riff on Beethoven’s Fifth symphony by Jon Batiste, the Grammy Award and Academy Award-winning singer, songwriter and composer.
