"The National Book Awards' 2025 fiction prize went to The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), by Rabih Alameddine, a novel about a lapsed writer living unhappily with his mom in Beirut. It is Alameddine's ninth book. In his speech last night, the author thanked his publisher, independent booksellers, and writer friends like Amy Tan and Sara Schulman; he also thanked his psychiatrist, his drug dealers, and "all gastrointestinal doctors": "I guarantee I would not have been able to write a single word in the last ten years without their help.""
"The night's nonfiction prize went to Omar El Akkad for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, a moral accounting of Israel's atrocities in Palestine and the western world's complicity. "It is difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide," he said onstage. In the translated-literature category, winner Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, author of We Are Green and Trembling, said she would give her acceptance speech in Spanish because "there are fascists who don't like it.""
"George Saunders, who was given a slightly premature lifetime-achievement award, thanked the people who have read his work but also "those of you who had planned to read it but never quite got around to it and even those of you who never had any intention of reading it but sometimes claimed that you already had.""
Rabih Alameddine won the 2025 National Book Awards fiction prize for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), a novel about a lapsed writer living unhappily with his mother in Beirut. Alameddine credited publishers, independent booksellers, writer friends, his psychiatrist, drug dealers, and gastrointestinal doctors for enabling his writing over the past decade. Omar El Akkad won nonfiction for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, a moral accounting of Israel's atrocities in Palestine and Western complicity. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara won translated literature and chose to give her acceptance speech in Spanish. Notable attendees included Deborah Treisman, Roxane Gay, Jeff Hiller, and George Saunders.
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