The National Book Critics Circle Award nominees were announced Saturday night. Since their selections generally track our composite Best of the Best of the Year lists and the reviews we aggregate at PublishersMarketplace, the two biggest surprises were the inclusion of 101-year-old Hans Keilson’s very-lightly-reviewed German novel, and the omission of Rebecca Skloot’s widely-loved The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Going by our previously-published Best of…. lists, the winners will include Jonathan Franzen, Isabel Wilkerson, Patti Smith, Anne Carson and Elif Batuman. (Sarah Bakewell is the favorite in biography, though it’s hazier.) Additionally, Parul Sehgal is the recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and Dalkey Archive Press won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
Fiction
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
To the End of the Land by David Grossman
Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Nonfiction
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Autobiography
Half a Life by Darin Strauss
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Crossing Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird
The Autobiography of an Execution by David Dow
Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
Hiroshima in the AM by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Biography
How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography by Selina Hastings
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History by Yunte Huang
The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends by Tom Segev
Poetry
One With Others by C.D. Wright
Nox by Anne Carson
The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
The Best of It by Kay Ryan
Criticism
The Possessed by Elif Batuman
The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh
The Cruel Radience by Susan Linfield
Vanishing Point by Ander Monson