National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

As a book reviewer myself, I especially value the opinion of fellow reviewers… readers all! Check out the new National Book Critics Circle Award winners! The National Book Critics Circle is made up up of nearly 700 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing each year with their awards for the finest books published in English. --Kate McClelland


FICTION AWARD WINNER:
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

This novel is set in the nineteen-eighties in the northeast corner of India, where the borders of several Himalayan states—Bhutan and Sikkim, Nepal and Tibet—meet. The New Yorker says, "Briskly paced and sumptuously written, the novel ponders questions of nationhood, modernity, and class, in ways both moving and revelatory."



GENERAL NONFICTION AWARD WINNER:
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, by Simon Schama
Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, who would you want to win? Tens of thousands gave their answer, voting with their feet for Britain and King George, in response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated. Kirkus says, "An important contribution to the history of the Revolution, and of slavery in America."



BIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER:
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips
Julie Phillips has given us with this spellbinding portrait of Alice Sheldon, the extraordinary woman who created stunning works of science fiction under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. Sheldon, whose unconventional life included a childhood filled with exotic adventure, a stint in the CIA, and an eventual murder-suicide. Kirkus says, "Readers saw Tiptree as a manly man's writer, dealing with issues of sex and death, but one with an unusual talent for creating sympathetic female characters. Phillips is more than adept at plumbing Sheldon's writing to expose her anger at the role gender plays in sex, creativity and power."



AUTOBIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER:
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn
A writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic-- part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work. Elie Wiesel says, "It's a vast, highly colored tapestry. . . A reader cannot help but follow the trail breathlessly— first the suspense, doubt, surprise and, finally, the discovery. We share his anger, commend his hopes. And, when tears choke his voice, we, too, long to cry."