A couple of months ago I posted about the longlist for the Lettre Ulysses Award, a prize that is given to the best book-length reporting. They have since announced the winner and runners-up, and this year the award went to The People on the Street: A Writer’s View of Israel by Linda Grant. Her book is a ground level view of life in Israel, placing it in counterpoint to the scads of books that look at the region from 35,000 feet. In an excerpt, we read about the reaction on the street in Tel Aviv when people found out that Saddam had been captured.
2006 Lettre Ulysses Winner
2014 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award have been announced in New York City. The award is voted on by critics and considers all books in English (including in translation), no matter the country of origin. The winners in the various categories and some supplementary links:
Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, Lila (“Marilynne Robinson’s Singular Vision“)
Nonfiction: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (excerpt)
Autobiography: Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant (excerpt)
Criticism: Ellen Willis, The Essential Ellen Willis
Biography: John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (The Duality of the Human Psyche: On John Lahr’s Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh)
Poetry: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (A Year in Reading: Tiphanie Yanique)
Previously: The finalists
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2012 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award have been announced in New York City. The award is voted on by critics and considers all books in English (including in translation), no matter the country of origin. The winners in the various categories and some supplementary links:
Fiction: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ben Fountain’s Year in Reading, The Millions interview)
Nonfiction: Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Staff Pick, excerpt [pdf])
Autobiography: Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (The Millions review)
Criticism: Marina Warner, Stranger Magic
Biography: Robert Caro, The Passage of Power (The Millions review)
Poetry: D.A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Poet reading )
Previously: The finalists
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Booker Prize Longlist 2006
The Booker Prize longlist has arrived. I’ll do another post with some articles analyzing the list once the pundits across the pond have weighed in.Theft: A Love Story by Peter CareyThe Inheritance of Loss by Kiran DesaiGathering the Water by Robert EdricGet a Life by Nadine GordimerThe Secret River by Kate GrenvilleCarry Me Down by M.J. HylandKalooki Nights by Howard JacobsonSeven Lies by James LasdunThe Other Side of the Bridge by Mary LawsonSo Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregorIn the Country of Men by Hisham MatarThe Emperor’s Children by Claire MessudBlack Swan Green by David MitchellThe Perfect Man by Naeem MurrBe Near Me by Andrew O’HaganThe Testament of Gideon Mack by James RobertsonMother’s Milk by Edward St. AubynThe Ruby in her Navel by Barry UnsworthThe Night Watch by Sarah Waters
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And Then There Were Six: The Booker Shortlist
The big news is that Ian McEwen’s On Chesil Beach stays alive. I’ve heard pretty good things about the book, but I’d guess it’s not winning. He’s already won one for Amsterdam, and Atonement, considered by most to be his best, didn’t win in 2001 (True History of the Kelly Gang took it home that year). For the slight On Chesil Beach to win the prize would seem odd. Clearly, I’m not alone in this thinking, as the bookies, who favored McEwen when the longlist was announced, now favor Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. The longlist was offered here with some excerpts less than a month ago, but since you might not have gotten around to them then, we’ll offer the same with the shortlist below.Darkmans by Nicola BarkerThe Gathering by Anne Enright (excerpt)The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (excerpt)Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (excerpt)On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (excerpt)Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (excerpt)
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Awash in awards
Joseph Epstein (Fabulous Small Jews, Snobbery) takes a look at the glut of awards, literary and otherwise in a Wall Street Journal piece: “All this prize-giving has made the field of culture rather like one of those progressive preschools where, on graduation day, even the most hopeless child is given a prize for not actually maiming his classmates.”
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2012′s Literary Geniuses
This year’s “Genius grant” winners have been announced. The MacArthur grant awards $500,000, “no strings attached” to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” Alongside, scientists, artists and scholars are some newly minted geniuses with a literary focus. This year’s literary geniuses are:
Junot Díaz is no stranger to readers of The Millions. His novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was tops in our reader poll for the best books of the first decade of the millennium (and #11 among our panelists. Martha Southgate told us why.) It’s also a Millions Hall of Famer. Díaz first came to our attention with his incredible debut collection, Drown, and he recently returned with another hotly anticipated collection, This Is How You Lose Her, which was recently a jumping off point for an essay exploring Díaz’s “niftiest literary trick.” Finally, Díaz once graced these pages, sharing unique reading recommendations as a participant in our annual Year in Reading series.
Dinaw Mengestu has two books under his belt: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air. Mengestu became known to a wider audience after being named to the New Yorker’s widely discussed “20 under 40” list in 2010. Mengestu, who was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia but moved to the United States when he was two years old, was also one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” authors in 2007.
Journalist David Finkel is best known for his work as a staff writer at the Washington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. He is also the author of the book The Good Soldiers, which is an account of his time embedded with a division of Army Rangers in 2007 as part of the “Surge” meant to turn the tide in the Iraq War. That book won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, which is given to a book that exemplifies, “literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern.”
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2009’s Pulitzer Winners
After being shut out of the IMPAC shortlist, women sweep the Pulitzer fiction finalists and end The Tournament of Books Pulitzer streak. Taking home the prize is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, a book we noticed climbing the ranks of our Top Ten, even though we haven’t written much about it. Here are this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with excerpts where available:FictionWinner: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout – (a Year in Reading pick, excerpt)Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (excerpt)All Souls by Christine Schutt (Christine Schutt participates in our Year in Reading)General Nonfiction:Winner: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (excerpt)Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman (excerpt)The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William I. Hitchcock (excerpt)History:Winner: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (National Book Award winner, excerpt)This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust – (National Book Award Finalist, excerpt)The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert WeisbrotBiography:Winner: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Kevin’s review, excerpt)Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands (excerpt)The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll – excerptWinners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.
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