The National Book Critics Circle Award nominations are full of surprises including only one overlap with the National Book Award fiction nominees (Fountain) and three queer books in the biography category. Announced this morning:
FICTION
HHhH: A Novel
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
The Orphan Master's Son
Magnificence
NW
NONFICTION
“Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” by Katherine Boo
“Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,” by Steve Coll
“Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story,” by Jim Holt
“Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,” by David Quammen
“Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“The Distance Between Us,” by Reyna Grande
“My Poets,” by Maureen N. McLane
“House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East,” by Anthony Shadid
“Swimming Studies,” by Leanne Shapton
“In the House of the Interpreter,” by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
BIOGRAPHY
“The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” by Robert A. Caro
“All We Know: Three Lives
“Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
“Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus,” by Lisa Jarnot
“The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo,” by Tom Reiss
CRITICISM
“Reinventing Bach,” by Paul Elie
“Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays 
“Madness, Rack, and Honey,” by Mary Ruefle
“Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights,” by Marina Warner
“The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness,” by Kevin Young
POETRY
“Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations,” by David Ferry
“On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths,” by Lucia Perillo
“Fragile Acts,” by Allan Peterson
“Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems
“Olives,” by A. E. Stallings
Comments