The National Book Awards ceremony took place virtually last night and two Penguin Random House titles were chosen as winners!
We are honored and proud that TOKYO UENO STATION by Yu Miri, translated by Morgan Giles, was the winner in the Translated Literature category, and INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu, was the choice for Fiction.
This is the seventh year in the past eight in which at least one Penguin Random House title has received a National Book Award, one of the nation’s most respected, and competitive, literary prizes—and the fourth time in seven years, in three categories, Riverhead titles have won NBAs.
Translated Literature
TOKYO UENO STATION by Yu Miri. Translated, from the Japanese, by Morgan Giles (Riverhead Books)
This is a first-time win for a Penguin Random House title in the young category Best Translated Literature.
TOKYO UENO STATION is the surreal and spectral story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo’s busiest train stations. The New York Times Book Review calls the novel “glorious,” and O Magazine praises it as “spare and indelible.”
Both our author and her translator, on separate screens, were jubilant and emotional about their recognition. Yu Miri acknowledged her novel was “a difficult work to translate.” Morgan Giles, a first-time translator, thanked her “very much for letting me translate your beautiful work.”
Fiction
INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu (Pantheon Books)
INTERIOR CHINATOWN is the sixth Fiction winner in the past eight years published by Penguin Random House, preceded by Sigrid Nunez’s THE FRIEND in 2018.
From the infinitively inventive author of “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” Charles Yu’s INTERIOR CHINATOWN—one of Time Magazine’s “100 Must Read Books of 2020”– is “one of the funniest books of the year…a delicious, ambitious satire” (New York Times Book Review).
The complete list of Penguin Random House National Book Award winners, 2013-present:
Fiction:
- 2020: INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu (Pantheon)
- 2016: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
- 2015: FORTUNE SMILES: Stories by Adam Johnson (Random House)
- 2014: REDEPLOYMENT by Phil Klay (Penguin Press)
- 2013: THE GOOD LORD BIRD by James McBride (Riverhead)
Nonfiction:
- 2017: THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen (Riverhead)
- 2015: BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)
Poetry:
- 2015: VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS by Robin Coste Lewis (Knopf)
Young People’s Literature:
- 2014: BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulsen Books)
Translated Literature:
- 2020: TOKYO UENO STATION by Yu Miri. Translated, from the Japanese, by Morgan Giles (Riverhead)
