This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards, including Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. To receive book recommendations from our writers and editors, plus short reviews of recent releases, sign up for our new What We’re Reading newsletter.

“The School of Night” is the fourth volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “Morning Star” series, which the author began writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The novels rifle through the history of thought and culture, tracing the paths existential unknowns have carved,” Joshua Rothman wrote in a column, considering the series in January. “The School of Night,” translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is one of ten titles on this year’s longlist. The books on the list originally appeared in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. Intan Paramaditha’s “Night of a Thousand Hells,” about a young woman who carries out a suicide bombing and that act’s effect on her family, is the first Indonesian translation to be honored by the National Book Awards.

Egana Djabbarova, “My Dreadful Body”
Translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
New Vessel Press

Álvaro Enrigue, “Now I Surrender”
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Karim Kattan, “Eden at Dawn”
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Restless Books

Karl Ove Knausgaard, “The School of Night”
Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken
Penguin Press / Penguin Random House