SALON

Monday, Jan 14, 2013 3:17 PM UTC

Robert Caro, Katherine Boo nominated for National Book Critics Circle prize

Nominees across the six categories also included Zadie Smith, the late Anthony Shadid and Junot Diaz

By

Topics: From the Wires, literature, Writing, Junot Diaz, national book critics circle, robert caro, katherine boo, Books,

Robert Caro, Katherine Boo nominated for National Book Critics Circle prizeKatherine Boo

NEW YORK (AP) — Robert Caro, Katherine Boo and the late Anthony Shadid are among the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle prize.

Boo already won the National Book Award for her nonfiction account of a Mumbai community, “Beyond the Beautiful Forevers,” while Caro was a finalist for his latest Lyndon Johnson book, “The Passage of Power,” and Shadid for his memoir “House of Stone.” Zadie Smith’s “NW” and National Book Award contender Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” were fiction nominees.

Thirty authors in six competitive categories were announced Monday, with stories set everywhere from Texas to London to North Korea. Some of last year’s critical favorites were bypassed, including Junot Diaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her” and David Nasaw’s “The Patriarch.”

Others in the running for fiction include French author Laurent Binet’s “HHhH,” Adam Johnson’s “The Orphan Master’s Son” and Lydia Millet’s “Magnificence.” Boo is a nominee for general nonfiction, along with Andrew Solomon’s bestselling “Far from the Tree,” Steve Coll’s “Private Empire,” Jim Holt’s “Why Does the World Exist?” and David Quammen’s “Spillover.”

In biography the finalists were Caro, Tom Reiss’ “The Black Count,” Lisa Cohen’s “All We Know,” Lisa Jarnot’s “Robert Duncan, the Ambassador from Venus” and Michael Gorra’s “Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece.” The autobiography nominees were Shadid, Reyna Grande’s “The Distance Between Us,” Maureen N. McLane’s “My Poets,” Leanne Shapton’s “Swimming Studies” and Ngugi Wa Thiong’O's “In the House of the Interpreter.”

Paul Elie’s “Reinventing Bach” and Daniel Mendelsohn “Waiting for the Barbarians” were among the finalists in criticism. The other nominees were Mary Ruefle’s “Madness, Rack, and Honey,” Marina Warner’s “Stranger Magic” and Kevin Young’s “The Grey Album.”

In poetry, the finalists were David Ferry’s “Bewilderment,” Lucia Perillo’s “On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths,” Allan Peterson’s “Fragile Acts,” D.A. Powell’s “Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys” and A.E. Stallings’ “Olives.”

No cash prizes will be given to competitive winners, to be announced Feb. 27. But $1,000 will be divided between Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, winners of a lifetime achievement prize for their “groundbreaking work in feminist criticism.” William Deresiewicz, who writes for The Nation and The New Republic among others, will receive an honorary award for “excellence in reviewing.”

More Hillel Italie.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
284 points285 points | 61 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
249 points250 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
194 points195 points | 1 comment
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
93 points94 points | 10 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
54 points55 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations