Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.
The National Book Critics Circle Award
1997 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (Mariner/Houghton)
Fiction Finalists
- Don DeLillo, Underworld (Scribner)
- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain (Grove)
- Andrei Makine, Dreams of My Russian Summers (Arcade)
- Philip Roth, American Pastoral (Houghton Mifflin)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air (Villard)
- James Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Belknap Press)
- Pauline Maier, American Scripture (Knopf)
- Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (Norton)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- James Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War (Free Press)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx (Knopf)
- Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (Knopf)
- Doris Lessing, Walking in the Shade (HarperCollins)
Poetry Winner
- Charles Wright, Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry Finalists
- Frank Bidart, Desire (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Brenda Hillman, Loose Sugar (Wesleyan)
- Mark Jarman, Questions for Ecclesiastes (Story Line)
- Sonya Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions? (Beacon)
Criticism Winner
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Making Waves (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Criticism Finalists
- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Vivian Gornick, The End of the Novel of Love (Beacon)
- Alfred Kazin, God and the American Writer (Knopf)
- Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Harvard)
Nona Balakian Excellence in Reviewing Award Winner
- Thomas Mallon
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Leslie Fiedler