National Book Critics Circle Longlists
For the first time the National Book Critics Circle has announced longlists for its annual awards in the autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry categories, as well as for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. The finalists will be announced on January 23rd, and the prizes will be awarded on March 20th.
The fiction longlist looks pretty strong - I've read a couple of the titles already (it shares some selections with the Booker) and heard good things about many of the others, including one that's already on my reading list for next year - but I'm particularly interested in the Book in Translation prize given that one of my goals next year is to read more translated fiction. Here are the longlists for those two categories:
Fiction
- The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş
- Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
- Colored Television by Danzy Senna
- Godwin by Joseph O’Neill
- Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
- James by Percival Everett
- My Friends by Hisham Matar
- Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti
- Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
- Us Fools by Nora Lange
The Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize
- The Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies
- Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
- Holy Winter 20/21 by Maria Stepanova, translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale
- A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper
- Like a Sky Inside by Jakuta Alikavazovic, translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker
- Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden
- Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi, translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley
- A Muzzle for Witches by Dubravka Ugrešić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
- O by Judith Kiros, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson
- Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel by Yoko Tawada, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
- Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
- V13: Chronicle of a Trial by Emmanuel Carrère, translated from the French by John Lambert
Other Prizes
I'm also trying to read more poetry, so I'll likely dig into the poetry longlist. This is what that looks like:
- An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang
- Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen
- Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf
- A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye by V. Penelope Pelizzon
- Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin
- The Palace of Forty Pillars by Armen Davoudian
- Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips
- Sturge Town by Kwame Dawes
- Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
- Yard Show by Janice N. Harrington
I'm not at all interested in biography and autobiography, frankly, but there are a few books in the nonfiction and criticism categories that sound really interesting and that I'll likely try to make time for. They are:
- The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger
- Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman
- There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
- Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today by Claire Bishop
- Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
- Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life by Sofia Samatar
Obviously there's only so much time available and it's impossible to read everything, but I'm adding these to my list of books to pick from when I can't decide what to read next. We'll see how many I manage to get through!