Arundhati Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ wins best autobiography at US Book Critics award

Author Arundhati Roy’s memoir 'Mother Mary Comes to Me' has been awarded best autobiography at the 2026 National Book Critics Circle Awards in the United States. Among the other winners are a novel by Nobel Prize-winning writer Han Kang and Karen Hao’s exploration of artificial intelligence and OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT.

Han’s novel 'We Do Not Part', translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, delves into the 1948–1949 uprising on Jeju Island, located south of the Korean peninsula, during which thousands lost their lives.

Heather Scott Partington, who headed the fiction jury, described the book as "a work of blinding melancholy, bleak weather, and murmuring syntax" and added that it "lingers like an atmospheric and arresting dream". The lifetime achievement honour was presented to writer and journalist Frances FitzGerald, whose 1972 work Fire in the Lake offered an early and insightful account of the Vietnam War.

Public broadcasters NPR and PBS received a special recognition award for their contributions to literary culture. Commenting on the honour, Jacob M Appel, who led the selection panel, said: "At a time when some question the value of public, service-minded media, we salute PBS and NPR for all you have done for both book culture and American democracy,"

In other categories, Alex Green’s A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America's Disabled won the biography award. The poetry category was won by Kevin Young for Night Watch. The translation prize, recognising both author and translator, went to Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, translated by Natasha Lehrer.

Founded in New York in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle comprises more than 850 critics and editors. Its annual awards celebrate the finest books published in the United States over the previous year.