National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
Posted by: Sarah Hunter
It seems like just yesterday that I posted the National Book Critics Circle Award winners. So much so, in fact, that I searched for my original post to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself. Turns out it was about one year ago, and one year is enough time for a new batch of excellent titles to be published. Here are the finalists for this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards. The winners will be announced on February 28th, a date on which I’m sure I’ll be compelled to ask again, Where has the time gone?
FICTION
HHhH, by Laurent Binet and translated by Sam Taylor
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain
The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson
Magnificence, by Lydia Millet
NW, by Zadie Smith
NONFICTION
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, by Steve Coll
Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, by Jim Holt
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen
Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande
My Poets, by Maureen N. McLane
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East, by Anthony Shadid
Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton
In the House of the Interpreter, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
BIOGRAPHY
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro
All We Know: Three Lives, by Lisa Cohen
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, by Michael Gorra
Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography, by Lisa Jarnot
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
CRITICISM
Reinventing Bach, by Paul Elie
Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, by Daniel Mendelsohn
Madness, Rack, and Honey, by Mary Ruefle
Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, by Marina Warner
The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, by Kevin Young
POETRY
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, by David Ferry
On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths, by Lucia Perillo
Fragile Acts, by Allan Peterson
Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, by D. A. Powell
Olives, by A. E. Stallings
