The finalists for the annual National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award have been announced. The fiction list includes one of the biggest fiction releases of last year and a book in translation. To our eye, the five make up a well-rounded an interesting mix of titles. Here are the finalists for fiction and non-fiction with excerpts and other links where available. As a side note, the NBCC award is particularly interesting in that it is one of the few major awards that pits American books against overseas (usually British) books.
Fiction
- Laurent Binet, HHhH (The missing pages of HHhH)
- Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ben Fountain’s Year in Reading, The Millions interview)
- Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son (excerpt)
- Lydia Millet, Magnificence (Lydia Millet’s Year in Reading)
- Zadie Smith, NW (Zadie Smith’s Year in Reading, our review, the first lines of NW)
Nonfiction
- Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (The Millions Interview, National Book Award winner)
- Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (excerpt)
- Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story (excerpt)
- David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (excerpt)
- Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Staff Pick, excerpt [pdf])
For more on the NBCC Awards and the finalists in the other categories, visit the NBCC.
