2016 Oscar nominations in books

2016 is a particularly literary year for the Academy Awards with no fewer than five of the eight films nominated for Best Picture being inspired by books. Here are 11 books that have inspired films in this year’s list of Oscar nominees.


Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

In 1952, Eilis Lacey leaves Ireland to immigrate to Brooklyn, where she has a better chance of finding work. Crushed by homesickness, Eilis finds her spirits lifted by an Italian-American suitor with whom she falls in love. When she must return to Ireland, Eilis is courted by a hometown boy and finds herself torn between two countries and the two men who love her.


Room by Emma Donoghue

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Directing, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

A young woman who has been held in captivity in a small shed for seven years tries to make as normal a life as she can for her five-year-old son, Jack, who knows her only as “Ma.” When Ma and Jack escape their captor, Old Nick, they must cope with the outside world and forge relationships with Ma’s conflicted family.


The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Directing, Best Film Editing, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Four outsiders to Wall Street use what are sometimes perceived as eccentric insights into the U.S. financial markets to predict the meltdowns of the housing market and big banks in 2008. Betting together on the coming catastrophe, the quartet manages to invest shrewdly and amass a fortune, all while exposing the corruption of several large financial institutions.


The Martian by Andy Weir

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind when an unexpected storm hits Mars, forcing his crewmates to abandon their mission. Watney, a botanist, must engineer ways to feed himself and survive the harsh environment, and after he reestablishes communication with NASA, scientists around the globe race against time to rescue him.


The Revenant by Michael Punke

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Directing, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects

While on a danger-laden journey through the American wilderness in the early 1800s, frontiersman Hugh Glass is badly mauled by a grizzly and abandoned by his fellow trappers. Barely surviving his wounds, Glass is driven by thoughts of his family and a desire for revenge as he endures the frigid winter and pursues the men who left him for dead.


The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff

Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design

In mid-1920s Copenhagen, the portrait artist Gerda Wegener, asks her husband, popular landscape artist Einar Wegener, to stand in for a female model who was late to come to their flat to pose for a painting she’s working on. The act of Einar posing as a female figure unmasks what turns out to be a lifelong identification on the part of Einar as a female, named Lili Elbe. This sets off a progression, first tentative and then irreversible, of leaving behind the identity as Einar, which Lili has struggled to maintain all her life.


Carol by Patricia Highsmith

Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music (Original Score), and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

In 1952, Therese Belivet, a temporary shopgirl and aspiring photographer, is working in Frankenberg’s department store in Manhattan during the Christmas season. She sees a glamorous woman, Carol, across the room looking at a model train set display. The two women develop a fast bond that becomes a love with complicated consequences.


When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson

Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

After lonely young Anna is sent to live in Hokkaido with her grandparents, she spends her time drawing and exploring her rural home. Anna is befriended by a mysterious blonde girl named Marnie who lives in an isolated mansion, and as their bond grows, Anna becomes obsessed with uncovering the secret of Marnie’s life.


The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

Nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling

After a long and colorful life working in munitions and getting entangled in the Spanish Civil War, the Manhattan Project, and other definitive events of the 20th century, Allan Karlsson finds himself stuck in a nursing home. Determined to escape on his 100th birthday, he leaps out of a window and onto the nearest bus, kicking off an unexpected journey.


Trumbo by Bruce Cook

Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role

Dalton Trumbo was the central figure of the infamous ‘Hollywood Ten’, the screenwriters who, during the McCarthy era, were charged by the House Committee on Un-American Acitivities for their associations with the Communist Party. Due to their refusal to cooperate during the investigation, Trumbo and his fellow screenwriters were declared in contempt of Congress and were ultimately blacklisted from Hollywood and some were even jailed. This is their story.


50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James

Nominated for Best Music (Original Song)

When literature student Anastasia Steele is tasked with interviewing a university benefactor, billionaire Christian Grey, the two share an immediate attraction. Christian sets out to seduce the virginal Ana, and as he grooms her to become the latest participant in his string of dominant-submissive relationships, Ana must decide if she can accept Christian’s insistence on a romance-free liaison.

Cover image for The Danish Girl

The Danish Girl

David Ebershoff

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