National Book Award Finalists: Erdrich, Eggers, Diaz, Fountain, Powers

Judges Stacey D'Erasmo, Lorrie Moore, Janet Peery, and Dinaw Mengestu ignored the year's gentle novels to nominate these five books, all touched by brutality. The only novel by a woman, Louise Erdrich's wonderful The Round House, is about a 13 year-old boy hellbent on avenging his mother's rape (not sensationalized); two violent deaths ensue. Dave Eggers' thoughtful novel is about an American man in Saudi Arabia struggling against the financial meltdown. Junot Diaz's book is ten stories about lusty, cheatin, reckless Yunior. And the other two are first novels about the Iraq War: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk follows the 19 year-old during a Dallas Cowboys football game at which the he and his fellow soldiers are feted alongside Destiny's Child. In the gritty, blood-soaked The Yellow Birds, an 18 year-old and 21 year-old fight insurgents in Al Tafar.

The nonfiction judges are Brad Gooch, Susan Orlean, Linda Gordon, Woody Holton, and Judith Shulevitz.

FICTION

Junot Dí­az, This Is How You Lose Her

Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

Louise Erdrich, The Round House

Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds

 
 
NONFICTION
 
Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4
 
Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir

Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

 
 YA and Poetry after the jump

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
 

William Alexander, Goblin Secrets

Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach

Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down

Eliot Schrefer, Endangered

Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

POETRY

 
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (Phoenix Poets)

Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies

Tim Seibles, Fast Animal

Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic

Susan Wheeler, Meme

Comments

[Steve Berman]

How interesting that the NBAs post their judges unlike the Lammys.

[Eli Manning]

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