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
2012 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco)
Fiction Finalists
- Laurent Binet, HHhH. tr. by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House)
- Lydia Millet, Magnificence (W. W. Norton)
- Zadie Smith, NW (The Penguin Press)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Scribner)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
- Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (The Penguin Press)
- Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (A Liveright Book: W. W. Norton)
- David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (W.W. Norton)
Biography Winner
- Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)
Biography Finalists
- Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Michael Gorra, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (A Liveright Book: W. W. Norton)
- Lisa Jarnot, Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography (University of California Press)
- Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown Publishers)
Autobiography
- Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us (Atria Books)
- Maureen N. McLane, My Poets (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, In the House of the Interpreter (Pantheon)
Poetry Winner
- D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press)
Poetry Finalists
- David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)
- Lucia Perillo, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (Copper Canyon Press)
- Allan Peterson, Fragile Acts (McSweeney’s Books)
- A. E. Stallings, Olives (Triquarterly: Northwestern University Press)
Criticism Winner
- Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Daniel Mendelsohn, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Books)
- Mary Ruefle Madness, Rack, and Honey (Wave Books)
- Kevin Young, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (Graywolf Press)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- William Deresiewicz
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Abigail Deutsch
- Lev Grossman
- Garth Risk Hallberg
- Kathryn Harrison
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar