The National Book Foundation Announces Its 5 Under 35 Honorees for 2024

Here’s how the National Book Foundation describes Angress’s debut novel: “Set during the rising Occupy Wall Street movement, Antonia Angress’s Sirens & Muses first follows a trio of students as they navigate class, ambition, and queer desire at a prestigious art school. After a dangerous prank, the artists are thrust alongside their former professor into New York City’s ruthless art scene and forced to grapple with what it means to make authentic art amongst capitalism.”

“In Hangman by Maya Binyam, an unnamed narrator returns to his homeland in sub-Saharan Africa, his ticket purchased and bags packed for him. After nearly three decades in the United States, he sets off on a dizzying journey to find his dying brother in Binyam’s reflection on immigration, refuge, and returning to an unrecognizable—or unreachable—home.”

“Brother Alive chronicles the lives of three unrelated boys—Youssef, Iseul, and Dayo—who are adopted by an imam as infants and raised above a mosque in Staten Island. The boys are inseparable, but don’t know Youssef’s biggest secret: he has an imaginary, shape-shifting friend he calls Brother. Zain Khalid’s novel takes the brothers from childhood to adulthood and from New York City to Saudi Arabia, questioning the very nature of belief.”

“In Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting, readers follow three generations of a Black working-class family in Brooklyn—from the 1980s to present day—that have all been gifted with the ability to communicate with the dead. In the years after his mother’s passing, Colly comes to terms with his inheritance and eventually returns home to find out what it means to build a collective path forward.”

“Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s epic coming-of-age tale Four Treasures of the Sky follows Daiyu, a young girl who is kidnapped in China and smuggled to the United States in the late 19^th century. In the face of rising anti-Chinese sentiment and overwhelming personal tragedy, the narrator must continuously reinvent and reclaim herself to survive.”