The L.A. Times Book Prizes: A Terrible Blow for Oscar Wao
Posted by: Keir
The 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been announced. And there’s one name that’s conspicuously absent.
Biography
Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Knopf)
Current Interest
Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point, by Elizabeth D. Samet (Farrar)
Fiction
Be Near Me, by Andrew O’Hagan (Harcourt)
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead)
History
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
Mystery/Thriller
The Indian Bride, by Karin Fossum (Harcourt)
Poetry
Old Heart: Poems, by Stanley Plumly (Norton)
Science & Technology
I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas R. Hofstadter (Basic)
Young Adult Fiction
A Darkling Plain, by Philip Reeve (Eos)
2007 Robert Kirsch Award
Maxine Hong Kingston
If I were a gambling man, I would have picked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to win Fiction and A Long Way Gone to win Current Interest. But then again, they often do things differently on the Left Coast. Last year, for instance, they chose A Woman in Jerusalem over The Road. But I am positively delighted to see Be Near Me getting more recognition.
