These Are The Finalists For The 2017 National Book Critics Circle Awards

The NBCC has announced its 30 finalists in six categories — autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry — for the most outstanding books of 2017.

FICTION

The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott

Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy

Improvement, Joan Silber

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward

NONFICTION

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, Jack Davis

The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances FitzGerald

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, Masha Gessen

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, Kapka Kassabova

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, Adam Rutherford

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir, Thi Bui

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay

Admissions: Life As a Brain Surgeon, Henry Marsh

The Girl From the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China, Xiaolu Guo

BIOGRAPHY

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caroline Fraser

The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography, Edmund Gordon

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek, Howard Markel

Gorbachev: His Life and Times, William Taubman

Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Kenneth Whyte

POETRY

Fourth Person Singular, Nuar Alsadir

Earthling, James Longenbach

Whereas, Layli Long Soldier

The Darkness of Snow, Frank Ormsby

Directions for Use, Ana Ristovic

CRITICISM

You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages, Carina Chocano

The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, Edwidge Danticat

Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, Camille Dungy

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, Valeria Luiselli

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, Kevin Young

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