The finalists for this year's National Book Criics Circle Awards were announced over the weekend, and we find ourselves in the happy position of two local publishers vying for the same prize. We can't take sides--and truly, the books are quite different from each other--so instead we just wish congratulations to them both. Geoff Dyer's "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition," published by Graywolf Press of Minneapolis, is a finalist in the criticism category, along with "Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music," by Ellen Willis, published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Their competition: "Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything," by David Bellos (Faber & Faber); "The Ecstasy of Influence," by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday); and "Karaoke Culture," by Dubravka Ugresic (Open Letter).
And here are the other categories and the other finalists. Where we have reviewed a book, I've provided a link to the review.
Fiction
"Open City," by Teju Cole (Random House)
"The Marriage Plot," by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
"The Stranger's Child," by Alan Hollinghurst (Alfred A. Knopf)
"Binocular Vision," by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books) (Also a finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize)
