National Book Award Nominees
Matthiessen, Robinson among book award finalists
By Hillel Italie
AP/Modesto Bee
Talk about second chances: Peter Matthiessen, 81, received a National Book Award nomination Wednesday for “Shadow Country,” an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s.
Others in the fiction category included Marilynne Robinson for “Home,” a companion novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gilead”; Aleksandar Hemon for “The Lazarus Project”; and debut authors Salvatore Scibona (“The End”) and Rachel Kushner (“Telex From Cuba”).
Among the nonfiction finalists were Jane Mayer for “The Dark Side,” an investigation into the war against terrorism, and Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” Richard Howard and Mark Doty were nominees for poetry, while Laurie Halse Anderson was cited for young people’s literature.
Winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be announced Nov. 19 at a ceremony hosted by author-performance artist Eric Bogosian. Honorary prizes will be given to author Maxine Hong Kingston and publisher Barney Rosset. [Read more here.]
