Novelist Rabih Alameddine and poet Patricia Smith win National Book Awards Arts Nov 20, 2025 12:59 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) — National Book Awards judges honored authors worldwide on Wednesday night, from Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine’s “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)” to Chicago-born poet Patricia Smith’s “The Intentions of Thunder.”

Alameddine’s narrative of intense family bonds within the chaos of modern Lebanon received the fiction prize, while Smith, who has received numerous previous awards for her lyricism and intensity, won for poetry. The nonfiction prize was given to Egyptian Canadian novelist-journalist Omar El Akkad for his fierce indictment of the contemporary West, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.”

Iranian American Dani

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