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Aleksei Navalny Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
Hisham Matar won the fiction prize, and Sandra Cisneros received the lifetime achievement award.
A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, “Patriot,” as a masterpiece and “an eyewitness account of history, and a work of moral imperative and literary intelligence.”
Hisham Matar’s novel “My Friends,” a story about a Libyan man living in exile in London, won the fiction prize.
The awards, which were announced Thursday at a ceremony at the New School in New York City, are among the most highly regarded literary prizes in the United States. The winners are chosen by book critics instead of committees made up of authors or academics, which is how most literary prizes are administered.
The organization, which dates to 1974, is made up of more than 800 critics and review editors. This year’s awards recognized works published in 2024 and were open to authors of books published in English in the United States.
Along with awards in categories like biography, criticism, autobiography, fiction and poetry, the group also recognizes individuals and organizations for their work in support of literary culture.
