Chinese Immigrant’s Novel Wins Honor

Capping a ceremony hosted by Steve Martin and featuring Oprah Winfrey, National Book Award judges on Wednesday night honored a writer grateful just to be in the United States.

Ha Jin, a former member of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, won the fiction prize for his novel “Waiting.”

“I want to thank America, the land of generosity and prosperity,” said the author, who emigrated from China in 1985 and now teaches at Emory University. “Above all, I thank the English language, which has embraced me as an author and provided me with a niche where I can do meaningful work.”

“Waiting,” set in contemporary China, tells the story of an army doctor in love with a nurse but unwilling, and eventually unable, to divorce the peasant woman with whom he has an arranged marriage. He’ll need more than a decade before a judge will let him do it.

“It’s based on a true story,” the author said in a pre-ceremony interview. “I just couldn’t believe it when I heard about it.”

Other finalists for the fiction prize included Andre Dubus III, son of the late fiction writer and essayist, and Kent Haruf, whose novel “Plainsong” emerged this fall as a critical and commercial favorite.

This was the 50th year for the awards. Nobel winner Toni Morrison and NBA-winning biographer David McCullough were among those present.

Martin, who has evolved from a stand-up comedian to a playwright and essayist, began the night by joking that when he agreed to host a ceremony for the “NBA” he thought that meant the National Basketball Assn. He then praised the book awards as a major literary event, “second only to the annual Barnes & Noble kiss-up luncheon.”

He made mocking comparisons to the Academy Awards, urging NBA winners to move more quickly and “not let the applause die out before you go to the stage.” When one winner read a prepared statement after saying she didn’t think she’d get the prize, Martin observed, “You didn’t expect to win and yet you wrote a speech.”

Winfrey, whose monthly book club selections have transformed many once-obscure authors into instant bestsellers, received a 50th anniversary gold medal for her “influential contribution to reading and books.” Describing herself as “giddy” about the citation, she praised books for allowing her to see a world beyond “Mississippi and poverty.”

Morrison is now a close friend, but Winfrey remembered calling her long before they knew each other, convincing the local Fire Department to give out the author’s unlisted number. Once on the phone, Winfrey complained that Morrison’s prose was so complex that going through it once wasn’t enough.

“That, my dear, is called reading,” Morrison replied.

For nonfiction books, John W. Dower was cited for “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.”

Ai, a pen name for Florence Anthony, won for “Vice: New & Selected Poems,” and Kimberly Willis Holt was chosen in the young people’s literature category for “When Zachary Beaver Came to Town.”

The awards in each category were selected by five-member panels of authors and critics. The National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization, sponsored the event. Winners receive $10,000.