News

RH, Knopf, HM Lead NBCC Finalists
Staff -- 2/5/01

The finalists for the 2000 National Book Critics Circle awards include five titles from Random House and three from Knopf and Houghton Mifflin. Publishing veteran Barney Rosset, founder of the 50-year old Grove Press, will receive the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award;Daniel Mendelsohn will be awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for excellence in reviewing.

The complete list of finalists for the 2000 NBCC awards follows.

Fiction:A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom (Random House); The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random); Being Dead by Jim Crace (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Assorted Fire Events: Stories by David Means (Context Books); White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Random).

General Nonfiction:Crucible of War by Fred Anderson (Knopf); Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover (Random); Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War by Frances Fitzgerald (Simon & Schuster); Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett (Hyperion); The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan (Univ. of Chicago Press).

Biography/Autobiography:Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix (HC); The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel by Robin Marantz Henig (HM); I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 by Victor Klemperer (Random); The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw (HM); Marcel Proust: A Life by Jean-Yves Tadié (Viking).

P try:Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson (Knopf); The Ledge by Michael Collier (HM); Carolina Ghost Woods by Judy Jordan (Louisiana State Univ. Press); Talking Dirty to the Gods by Yusef Komunyakaa (FSG); Ultima Thule by Davis McCombs (Yale Univ. Press).

Criticism:From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun (HC); Quarrel & Quandary by Cynthia Ozick (Knopf); Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont (Knopf); Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New by Charles Rosen (Harvard Univ. Press); A P try of Two Minds by Sherod Santos (Univ. of Georgia Press).

The winners will be announced on March 12 at a ceremony at the Tishman Auditorium of New York University Law School. For more information, call Barbara Hoffert at (212) 463-6806.