Jonathan Franzen, Barbara Demick among 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award finalists
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The National Book Critics Circle announced its 2010 awards finalists in New York on Saturday. The L.A. Times’ Barbara Demick is among the five nonfiction finalists for her book ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.’ On the fiction front, Jonathan Franzen, who was notably absent from the National Book Awards, made the finalist list with his novel ‘Freedom.’
The National Book Critics Circle named five finalists in five categories -- fiction, nonficiton, criticism, biography and poetry. A sixth category, autobiography, has six finalists this year. Two other awards were also announced: Dalkey Archive Press will receive the Sandroff Award for Lifetime Achievement and writer Parul Sehgal will be awarded the Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in New York on March 10.
The complete list of finalists for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Awards:
Fiction:
‘A Visit From the Goon Squad’ by Jennifer Egan
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen
‘To the End of the Land’ by David Grossman
‘Comedy in a Minor Key’ by Hans Keilson
‘Skippy Dies’ by Paul Murray
Nonfiction:
‘Nothing to Envy’ by Barbara Demick
‘Empire of the Summer Moon’ by S.C. Gwynne
‘Apollo’s Angels’ by Jennifer Homans
‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee
‘The Warmth of Other Suns’ by Isabel Wilkerson
Autobiography:
‘Half a Life’ by Darin Strauss
‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith
‘Crossing Mandelbaum Gate’ by Kai Bird
‘The Autobiography of an Execution’ by David Dow
‘Hitch-22’ by Christopher Hitchens
‘Hiroshima in the AM’ by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Biography:
‘How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer’ by Sarah Bakewell
‘The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography’ by Selina Hastings
‘Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History’ by Yunte Huang
‘The Killing of Crazy Horse’ by Thomas Powers
‘Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends’ by Tom Segev
Poetry:
‘One With Others’ by C.D. Wright
‘Nox’ by Anne Carson
‘The Eternal City’ by Kathleen Graber
‘Lighthead’ by Terrance Hayes
‘The Best of It’ by Kay Ryan
Criticism:
‘The Posessed’ by Elif Batuman
‘The Professor and Other Writings’ by Terry Castle
‘Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West’ by Clare Cavanagh
‘The Cruel Radience’ by Susan Linfield
‘Vanishing Point’ by Ander Monson
-- Carolyn Kellogg
[Updated at 7:45 a.m. Jan 23: An earlier version of this post said the NBCC Awards would be held March 8. There will be readings March 8 and 9, with the awards held on March 10.]
