Award season is in full swing, and this year’s National Book Award finalists have just been announced on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”. After two years in a row of the fiction finalists numbering four women versus one male author, the gender count is reversed this time. The list also includes some very well-known names (Junot Díaz, fresh off his Genius Grant, is a previous Pulitzer winner; Dave Eggers is a former Pulitzer finalist; and Louse Erdrich is a former NBCC Award winner). This is something of a departure from the more obscure focus of recent years.
In nonfiction, Anthony Shadid got a posthumous nod after he dies while reporting from Syria.
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
- This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz (The Millions review, Díaz’s Year in Reading, a Top Ten book)
- A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (excerpt [pdf], a former Top Ten book)
- The Round House by Louise Erdrich (excerpt)
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (The Millions interview, excerpt)
- The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (excerpt)
Nonfiction:
- Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 by Anne Applebaum
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (excerpt)
- The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 by Robert Caro (The Millions review, excerpt)
- The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez
- by Anthony Shadid (“Remembering Anthony Shadid in Beirut“, excerpt)
Poetry:
- Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations by David Ferry
- Heavenly Bodies by Cynthia Huntington
- Fast Animal by Tim Seibles (excerpt)
- Night of the Republic by Alan Shapiro (excerpt)
- Meme by Susan Wheeler (excerpt)
Young People’s Literature:
- Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
- Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos (excerpt)
- Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick
- Endangered by Eliot Schrefer
- Bomb: The Race to Build — and Steal — the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin (excerpt)
