March 10, 2008
National Book Critics Circle Awards announced
The 2007 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on March 6, 2008. Awards are given in several categories, including fiction, general nonfiction, biography/autobiography, and poetry. Winners are chosen by the 700+ reviewers who are part of the National Book Critics Circle.
Criticism
Alex Ross. The Rest is Noise
The Rest Is Noise takes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with pure beauty or battered them with pure noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. ~Book Jacket
Finalists:
Joan Acocella. Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays
Julia Alvarez. Once Upon a Quinceańera: Coming of Age in the USA
Susan Faludi. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
Ben Ratliff. The Story of a Sound
Poetry
Mary Jo Bang. Elegy
Mary Jo Bang's fifth collection, "Elegy," chronicles the year following the death of her son. By weaving the particulars of her own loss into a tapestry that also contains the elements common to all losses, Bang creates something far larger than a mere lament. Continually in search of an adequate metaphor for the most profound and private grief, the poems in "Elegy "confront, in stark terms and with a resilient voice, how memory haunts the living and brings the dead back to life. Within these intimate and personal poems is a persistently urgent, and deeply touching, examination of grief itself.
Finalists:
Matthea Harvey. Modern Life
Michael O'Brien. Sleeping and Waking
Tom Pickard. The Ballad of Jamie Allan
Tadeusz Rózewicz. New Poems, trans. by Bill Johnston
Biography
Tim Jeal. Stanley, the Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
Presents the tragic life of Henry Morton Stanley, the adventurer in the great age of exploration. Rejected by both parents at birth and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America, fought in the Civil War - on both sides - before becoming a journalist and then an explorer. ~Publisher's description
Finalists:
Hermione Lee. Edith Wharton
Arnold Rampersad. Ralph Ellison: A Biography
John Richardson. The Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932
Claire Tomalin. Thomas Hardy
General Nonfiction
Harriet Washington. Medical Apartheid
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. ~Book Jacket
Finalists:
Philip Gura. American Transcendentalism: A History
Daniel Walker Howe. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848
Tim Weiner. Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA
Alan Weisman. The World Without Us
Autobiography
Edwidge Danticat. Brother, I'm Dying
When the author was only four years old, her parents emigrated from Haiti to New York in search of a better life, leaving their daughter in the care of her uncle Joseph. A peaceful pastor in Port-au-Prince, Joseph raised Edwidge with the love and devotion of a father, despite facing many hardships in politically turbulent Haiti. It wasn't until she was 12 years old that Edwidge was finally reunited with her parents--and forced to confront the inevitably complex emotions.
Finalists:
Joshua Clark. Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone
Joyce Carol Oates. The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982
Sara Paretsky. Writing in an Age of Silence
Anna Politkovskaya. Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia
Fiction
Junot Diaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukś-the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. ~Book Jacket
Finalists:
Vikram Chandra. Sacred Games
Hisham Matar. In the Country of Men
Joyce Carol Oates. The Gravedigger’s Daughter
Marianne Wiggins. The Shadow Catcher
Posted by Abby at March 10, 2008 11:40 AM
