The National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced

(from flavorwire.com
by Jason Diamond)


The finalists for the National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced, including the recipient of the first ever John Leonard Prize that honors an author’s first book. The awards will be presented on March 13 at the New School in New York City.

FICTION

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (Knopf)

Alice McDermott, Someone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Javier Marías, The Infatuations, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Knopf)

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking)

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (Little, Brown)


NONFICTION

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice (Norton)

Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown)

David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief (Knopf)


POETRY

Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Knopf)

Denise Duhamel, Blowout (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon)

Carmen Gimenez Smith, Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press)


AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave (Knopf)

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby (Viking)

Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury)

Amy Wilentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti (Simon & Schuster)


BIOGRAPHY

Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Doubleday)

Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press)

John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (Knopf)

Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Mark Thompson, Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis (Cornell University Press)


CRITICISM

Hilton Als, White Girls (McSweeney’s)

Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations (Liveright)

Jonathan Franzen, The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus, translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen with Paul Reitter and Daniel Kehlmann (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Janet Malcolm, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (Verso)


NONA BALAKIAN CITATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN REVIEWING

Katherine A. Powers

Finalists:

Ruth Franklin

James Marcus

Roxana Robinson

Alexandra Schwartz


IVAN SANDROF LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith


JOHN LEONARD PRIZE

Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth)