The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards have just been announced:
Fiction:
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
David Grossman, To the End of the Land, tr. by Jessica Cohen
Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key, tr. by Damion Searls
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Poetry:
C. D. Wright, One with Others: [a little book of her days]
Finalists:
Anne Carson, Nox
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems
Nonfiction:
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Finalists:
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Biography:
Sarah Bakewell, How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Finalists:
Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History
Thomas Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse
Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends
Autobiography:
Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978
David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Criticism:
Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West
Finalists:
Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings
Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence
Ander Monson, Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Parul Sehgal
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Dalkey Archive Press
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), comprised of approximately 600 active book reviewers, “honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature.” You can read more about the winners and finalists here.
~ Olivia M.
