Finalists for the National Book Awards Named

The National Book Foundation has announced the selection of 15 works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction as finalists for the National Book Awards.

Finalists in fiction are “Wartime Lies,” by Louis Begley (Alfred A. Knopf); “Frog” by Stephen Dixon (British-American Publishing); “The MacGuffin” by Stanley Elkin (Simon & Schuster); “Mating” by Norman Rush (Alfred A. Knopf) and “Beyond Deserving” by Sandra Scofield (The Permanent Press).

Begley and Rush are first novelists.

Two previous winners of National Book Awards in poetry are among the 1991 poetry finalists. The 1974 winner Adrienne Rich is a finalist this year for “An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991” (W. W. Norton). Philip Levine, who won the award in 1980, is a 1991 finalist for “What Work Is” (Alfred A. Knopf).

The other finalists in poetry are “The Never-Ending” by Andrew Hudgins (Houghton Mifflin Co.); “Eva-Mary” by Linda McCarriston (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University) and “The Homeplace” by Marilyn Nelson Waniek (Louisiana State University Press).

In nonfiction, the finalists are “Why Americans Hate Politics” a first book by E. J. Dionne Jr. (Simon & Schuster); “Praying for Sheetrock” by first-time author Melissa Fay Greene (Addison Wesley); “The Jameses: A Family Narrative” by R. W. B. Lewis (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); “Anne Sexton: A Biography” by Diane Wood Middlebrook (Houghton Mifflin Co.) and “Freedom” by Orlando Patterson (Basic Books/HarperCollins).

The three winners will be announced at an awards ceremony and dinner Nov. 20 in New York. Each will receive a $10,000 prize and a bronze sculpture.

Also to be announced at the dinner will be the recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.