Salman Rushdie, Percival Everett And Miranda July Are National Book Award Finalists

Salman Rushdie's memoir a bout his near-fatal stabbing, "Knife," and Percival Everett's revisionist historical novel, "James," are among the finalists for the 75th annual National Book Awards. Others nominated include author-filmmaker Miranda July for her explicit novel on middle age, "All Fours," and the celebrated Canadian poet Anne Carson for "Wrong Norma."

On Tuesday, the National Book Foundation announced finalists in fiction, nonfiction, young people's literature, poetry and books in translation. Judges in each category pared long lists of 10 unveiled last month to five final selections. Winners will be announced during a Nov. 20 dinner ceremony in Manhattan, when honorary prizes will be presented to novelist Barbara Kingsolver and publisher-activist W. Paul Coates.

In fiction, nominees besides "James" and "All Fours" are Pemi Aguda's debut story collection, "Ghostroots" Kaveh Akbar's debut novel, "Martyr!," Hisham Mayar's "Friend," a novel by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir "The Return."

Four of the five fiction books, including "James," were published by Penguin Random House. Everett's novel, which re-tells "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from the perspective of the enslaved man Mark Twain had named Jim, is also a Booker Prize finalist and among the year's most acclaimed works. Among the books on the fiction long list that judges left out of the final choices was Rachel Kushner's "Creation Lake," another Booker finalist.

Rushdie's "Knife Meditations After an Attempted Murder" is a nonfiction finalist, along with Jason De Leon's "Soldiers and Kings Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling," Eliza Griswold's "Circle of Hope A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church," Kate Manne's "Unshrinking How to Face Fatphobia" and Deborah Jackson Taffa's "Whiskey Tender."