Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2021 Longlist

 

This is an extremely helpful list to give you, the public service library worker, a good sense of the most critically acclaimed titles of the year that also appeal to a wide audience. 

It is my favorite sure bet, best list because these 46 titles are not just critical darlings, there is an emphasis from the RA professionals who chose them on readability. 

I know people on the jury and I can assure you, this is 100% a goal- readability and excellence in concert, and it is proved below as you see bestselling titles, genre titles, essayists, popular history and more. These are books you can confidently hand out to most readers which is not always the case with some awards. 

While the Carnegie is technically an award, I would treat this longlist more like a best list for general readers who are looking for top picks.

Here is the full report from Booklist Reader where each title is linked to more info and books which received a star review are also noted:

Forty-six books (26 fiction, 20 nonfiction) have been selected for the longlist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The six-title shortlist—three each for the fiction and nonfiction medals—will be chosen from longlist titles and announced on November 17, 2020. The two medal winners will be announced by 2021 selection committee chair Bill Kelly at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards (BMAs) event, which will take place online on Thursday, February 4, 2021, from 3 to 4 p.m. CST.

Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000. The six finalists and two winners will be honored during a celebratory event in the summer of 2021.

Fiction

★ Apeirogon, by Colum McCann (Random)

Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino, by Julián Herbert (Graywolf)

★ A Burning, by Megha Majumdar (Knopf)

★ Crooked Hallelujah, by Kelly Jo Ford (Grove)

★ Deacon King Kong, by James McBride (Riverhead)

★ Echo on the Bay, by Masatsugu Ono (Two Lines)

★ The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf)

★ Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf)

★ Here We Are, by Graham Swift (Knopf)

★ Homeland Elegies, by Ayad Akhtar (Little, Brown)

Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor (New Directions)

★ Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu (Pantheon)

★ Jack, by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)

★ The Last Great Road Bum, by Héctor Tobar (Farrar/MCD)

★ Luster, by Raven Leilani (Farrar)

★ Memorial, by Bryan Washington (Riverhead)

★ The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)

★ Parakeet, by Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar)

Pew, by Catherine Lacey (Farrar)

Red Dress in Black and White, by Elliot Ackerman (Knopf)

★ Run Me to Earth, by Paul Yoon (Simon & Schuster)

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart (Grove)

Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf)

★ Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell (Random)

★ The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett (Riverhead)

★ Weather, by Jenny Offill (Knopf)

Nonfiction

The Beauty in Breaking, by Michele Harper (Riverhead)

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creatures in the Natural World, by Patrik Svensson (Ecco)

★ Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random)

★ Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

★ The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by Les and Tamara Payne (Norton/Liveright)

★ The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, by Wayétu Moore (Graywolf)

★ Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, by Barbara Demick (Random)

★ Fathoms: The World in the Whale, by Rebecca Giggs (Simon & Schuster)

God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World, by Alan Mikhail (Norton/Liveright)

★ Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, by Robert Kolker (Doubleday)

Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman (Little, Brown)

★ Just Us: An American Conversation, by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf)

★ The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch, by Miles Harvey (Little, Brown)

★ Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, by Natasha Trethewey (Ecco)

★ Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong (Random/One World)

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, by Jenn Shapland (Tin House)

★ One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924–1965, by Jia Lynn Yang (Norton)

★ Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, by Jeffrey H. Jackson (Algonquin)

★ Recollections of My Nonexistence, by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

★ The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (Random/One World)