Percival Everett wins the National Book Award fiction prize : NPR

Everett’s novel, James, was widely praised by critics.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

Percival Everett, the prolific author of dozens of books, won the fiction prize Wednesday at this year’s National Book Awards. He won for his book James, which retells the story of Huckleberry Finn but from the perspective of Jim — the escaped slave Huck becomes friends with.

At his acceptance speech, Everett let his work speak for itself and stuck to thanking family, friends and colleagues. But he did open with a jab at artificial intelligence, saying it’s “no replacement for the real thing.”

The 75th National Book Awards ceremony took place in New York City Wednesday night. The actress, comedian and recent author Kate McKinnon hosted the show and took her own shots at A.I. in her opening monologue. “A book is an offering. It’s a hand in the darkness, a way of saying ‘I know, isn’t this crazy?'” she said. “And that’s something a robot will never be able to do.”

The non-fiction award went to Jason De León, who’s book Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling is an anthropological look at the people who bring migrants over the southern border. In his speech, he addressed the recent presidential election, saying “I will not accept the dystopian American future of unchecked corruption, border walls, misogyny, mass deportations, transphobia, climate change denial and all this other garbage that this incoming administration wants to propagate and profit from.”

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, winner of the poetry award, also addressed politics — criticizing both major U.S. political parties. Her collection, Something About Living, is an expansive look at Palestinian history and the Palestinian diaspora. Tuffaha encouraged people to “demand that any administration — no matter what letter it has at the end of its name… should stop funding and arming a genocide in Gaza,” she said.

The prize for translated literature went to Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and her translator Lin King, for their book Taiwan Travelogue. The book is a novel about the relationship between a Japanese novelist and her Taiwanese interpreter. But it’s also about the work of translation, as it presents itself as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer. And Shifa Saltagi Safadi won the award for Young People’s Literature for her book Kareem Between, a coming-of-age novel about a Syrian refugee.

Hosted by the National Book Foundation, the prizes are among the most prestigious awards in American letters. According to a statement from the foundation, a total of 1,917 books were submitted for consideration this year: 473 in Fiction, 671 in Nonfiction, 299 in Poetry, 141 in Translated Literature, and 333 in Young People’s Literature.