Welcome to Literary Award Season
22 November 2025 - 46 minsLiterature isn’t a horse race. Taste is subjective, and artistic value can’t be measured in terms of “winners" and “losers.”
That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try.
The book world’s awards season officially kicked off on Oct. 9, when the Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel Prize, and continued this month when the Booker Prize in England went to the novel “Flesh,” by the British writer David Szalay (also of Hungarian descent, as it happens). Then this week, five National Book Award winners were crowned in various categories at a ceremony in New York.
On this episode of the podcast, the host MJ Franklin talks with his fellow Book Review editors Emily Eakin, Joumana Kha...
Series Episodes
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘What We Can Know’
Ian McEwan’s latest novel, one of the Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2025, is a literary mystery about a scholar’s search for a long-lost poem.
51 mins
27 December 2025 Finished
What Did 2025 Mean for Books?
On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks with his Book Review colleagues Alexandra Alter, Tina Jordan and John Maher about the biggest book stories and most significant reading trends of 2025.
47 mins
19 December 2025 Finished
Our Book Critics on Their 2025 in Reading
On this episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with New York Times Book Review critics Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai about their standout fiction and nonfiction of the past 12 months.
36 mins
12 December 2025 Finished
The 10 Best Books of 2025
In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fellow editors at The New York Times Book Review to talk about the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year.
1 hour 18 mins
2 December 2025 Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Hamnet'
In this week's episode, host MJ Franklin leads a discussion about Maggie O'Farrell's "Hamnet" — one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2020, and the source of Chloé Zhao’s new movie of the same name.
1 hour 2 mins
28 November 2025 Finished
