The New York Times revealed its list of the top 10 books of 2024, selecting five fiction and five nonfiction titles.
Percival Everett made the list for James, his retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of the enslaved Jim. The novel won both the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award, and it was named Barnes & Noble’s book of the year.
Two novels shortlisted for this year’s National Book Award, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! and Miranda July’s All Fours, made the Times list, alongside Good Material by Dolly Alderton and You Dreamed of Empires, written by Álvaro Enrigue and translated by Natasha Wimmer.
Jonathan Blitzer wrote one of the nonfiction titles on the Times list, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, a book that was nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
The other nonfiction books on the list were I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante, Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides, and Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz, written by József Debreczeni and translated by Paul Olchváry.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
