2021 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. Here are the winning audiobooks that are available through your local bookstore.
Hamnet
A novel
By Maggie O'Farrell
Narrated by: Ell Potter
Length: 12 hours 42 minutes
Hamnet
“I loved Hamnet in very much the same way I loved Lincoln in the Bardo. This novel explores the way the dead haunt the living—especially how the death of a child haunts their parents—and does it in the context of a fascinating historical figure and time. But we know so much about the Lincolns, and so little about the Shakespeares. Maggie O’Farrell’s ability to construct a palpably real emotional life for all the members of the Shakespeare family—but especially for Shakespeare’s wife—is just magical. This is a powerful and haunting novel.”
Nina Barrett, Bookends & Beginnings
Island on Fire
The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
By Tom Zoellner
Narrated by: Mirron Willis
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes
From a New York Times bestselling author, a gripping account of the slave rebellion that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving... Read more »
Minor Feelings
An Asian American Reckoning
By Cathy Park Hong
Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness
“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen
One of Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • Named One of the Best... Read more »
Stranger in the Shogun's City
A Japanese Woman and Her World
By Amy Stanley
Narrated by: Joy Osmanski
Length: 10 hours 1 minutes
* Nominated for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award * Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography *
A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a great city on the... Read more »