It's that time again! Awards season is upon us as Hollywood prepares to recognize the many talented creators and contributors that made 2023 an incredible year in cinema. With the nominees announced, the deliberations beginning, and the final ballots still to be cast, we've got a few weeks until the big night's winners are finally revealed. If you're biding your time until the envelopes are opened and the statuettes are bestowed, queue up one of the acclaimed audiobooks behind this year's nominated films.
The basis for the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross, Erasure is one of Percival Everett's most blistering satires and a novel far ahead of its time. When Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career stalls out, he seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches a certain kind of Black fiction get all the attention. Struggling with family tragedies, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be a joking indictment of the industry. But when his joke becomes the Next Big Thing, Monk must deal with the fallout in this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.
The basis for Martin Scorsese's film adaptation, Killers of the Flower Moon reveals one of the most chilling sagas in American history. In the early 1920s, dozens of members of the Great Plains’ Osage tribe, who had struck it rich after oil was discovered on their reservation, were systematically murdered—when they weren’t outright robbed or deemed “incompetent” and deprived of their wealth by the federal government. Author David Grann tells the story through Mollie Burkhart, a full-blooded Osage Indian whose three sisters and brother-in-law were killed under suspicious circumstances; the resulting investigation tested the abilities of the newly formed FBI. The audiobook is narrated by three different performers, lending additional depth to the nuanced history.
Winner of the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, Alasdair Gray's brilliant and outrageous novel is the basis for Yorgos Lanthimos's nominated film. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of the beautiful Bella, who he brings back to life in a Frankenstein-esque feat. But his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for his creation. This story of passion and scientific daring whirls from the operating theaters of late-Victorian Glasgow through aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria, and a Parisian bordello, reaching an interrupted climax in a Scottish church.
American Prometheus, the culmination of about 20 years of research conducted by historian Martin J. Sherwin and compiled by writer Kai Bird, is the basis for Christopher Nolan's acclaimed Oppenheimer film. Narrated by Jeff Cummings, the audiobook covers everything from Oppenheimer’s childhood to his early career to the Manhattan Project, along with the bomb’s impact and Oppenheimer’s positioning within the greater discourse about nuclear warfare. The recipient of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography, American Prometheus offers fans of the film an even deeper dive into the figure of Oppenheimer, both inside and outside the context of the atomic bomb, to get an intimate peek at the man, his life, and his legacy.
The inspiration for the 2023 film starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell, Taichi Yamada's novel—originally titled Strangers and first published in 1987—is a touching and modern ghost story. The novel follows a man who is drawn back to his childhood home, where he discovers his long-dead parents living just as they were on the day they passed away, 30 years before. Deeply felt, searching, and profound, All of Us Strangers is a beautiful meditation on loss and the connection between familial love and romantic love.
The source material for the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name, Society of the Snow recounts the infamous 1972 Andes plane disaster in touching, multi-perspective fashion. Drawing on exclusive interviews, journalist Pablo Vierci recounts the unsettling stories of the 16 survivors in intimate detail, delving into the tragedy of the crash and how it radically redefined the rest of the survivors' lives. Sensitively narrated by Elliot Fitzpatrick, the audiobook is a powerful testament to the strength of faith, friendship, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul—it showed you who you really were. The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for 60 seconds without turning away. And no one could. The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting—and became the inspiration for Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. In a novel powered by both wit and pathos, Martin Amis excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Alice Walker's groundbreaking epistolary novel about Celie, a resilient woman facing poverty, loss, and oppression in the Jim Crow South, inspired an acclaimed 1985 film, a Tony Award-winning musical, and now, a 2023 movie musical starring Danielle Brooks, who garnered a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance. In this acclaimed audiobook narrated by Walker herself (note, the version read by Samira Wiley is another listener favorite), you can hear this iconic piece of American literature like never before.
One of the earliest comic-to-audio phenomenons, Nimona was created by Noelle Stevenson, whose whimsical story about a supervillain’s shape-shifting sidekick gained a devoted following as a Tumblr webcomic and then got a book deal. The graphic novel hit shelves in 2015, becoming a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Award finalist, and an audiobook. At the time, turning a visual story into an auditory one was rare, and Nimona struck new territory for audio dramas. The result—faithful to the book, but with a narrator for guidance and a full cast of characters with unique performers for each—gave the story its own audio signature. Now as an Oscar-nominated animated film, Nimona conquers yet another medium.
