Fiction by Edwidge Danticat, Valeria Luiselli and Karl Ove Knausgaard are among this year's finalists for the National Book Awards, with many of the books taking on such contentious issues as gender identity, criminal justice and the Middle East.
Tuesday's announcement by the National Book Foundation of five nominees in each of five competitive categories has at least one notable omission: Marlon James' “The Disappearers,” a Booker Prize finalist praised by The New York Times as among the century's best releases. James' novel, centered around the vicious beating of a group of gay men in Jamaica in the 1980s, had been on the National Book Awards fiction longlist of 10 released last month.
