Eugenides among National Book Critics Circle award nominees
(CBS/AP) Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, science-technology writer James Gleick and the late historian Manning Marable were among the nominees announced for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Eugenides was cited for "The Marriage Plot," a novel in part about a subject close to reviewers - the love of books. It's his first release since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for "Middlesex."
Other fiction finalists included short story writer Edith Pearlman, whose "Binocular Vision" was a National Book Award nominee last fall; Alan Hollinghurst's acclaimed "The Stranger's Child"; Dana Spiotta's "Stone Arabia" and Teju Cole's debut novel "Open City."
Five finalists in each of six categories were selected this weekend by the critics circle, founded in 1974. Great reviews do not guarantee an NBCC nomination. Some of the year's best-received books were among the missing, including Chad Harbach's "The Art of Fielding," Karen Russell's "Swamplandia" and Christopher Hitchens' "Arguably."
Winners will be announced March 8. No cash prizes are given.
Nominee highlights:
Fiction
Teju Cole, "Open City"Jeffrey Eugenides, "The Marriage Plot"
Alan Hollinghurst, "Stranger's Child"
Edith Pearlmam, "Binocular Vision"
Dana Spiotta, "Stone Arabia"
Nonfiction
Amanda Foreman, "A World On Fire"James Gleick, "The Information"
Adam Hochschild, "To End All Wars"
Maya Jasanoff, "Liberty's Exiles"
John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Pulphead"
Autobiography
Diana Ackerman, "One Hundred Names for Love"Mira Bartok, "Memory Palace"
Luis Rodriguez, "It Calls You Back"
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, "Harlem is Nowhere"
Deb Olin Unferth, "Revolution"
Biography
Mary Gabriel, "Love and Capital"John Lewis Gaddis, "George F. Kennan"
Paul Hendrickson, "Hemingway's Boat"
Manning Marable, "Malcolm X"
Ezra Vogel, "Deng Xiaoping"
Criticism
David Bellos, "Is That A Fish In Your Ear"Geoff Dyer, "Otherwise Known As the Human Condition"
Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence"
Dubravka Ugresic, "Karaoke Culture"
Ellen Willis, "Out of the Vinyl Deeps"
Poetry
Forrest Gander, " Core Samples..."Aracelis Girmay, "Kingdom Animalia"
Laura Kasischke, "Space, In Chains"
Yusef Komunyakaa, "The Chameleon Couch"
Bruce Smith, "Devotions