Critics decry narrow field in book awards

The judges of America’s National Book Awards are under fire for having turned their fiction category into a “municipal book award” by picking as finalists five obscure women writers living in Manhattan.

“It defies logic to think that five such similar books just happen to be the best of the year,” New York Times critic Caryn James said in an article Thursday that thundered against the “claustrophobic sameness” of the fiction list.

The winners of the National Book Awards, a major U.S. literary prize, will be announced Wednesday, and while the fiction nominations have angered booksellers, editors and critics for being so narrow, the nominations for nonfiction have been hailed for their diversity.

The nonfiction finalists include the final report of the 9/11 Commission and a highly praised life of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt called “Will in the World.”

By contrast, none of the five fiction nominees has sold more than 2,800 copies of their entries and several industry veterans said the first time they heard of the books was when they were nominated.

The annual prize is open to all U.S. authors. Many critics were outraged not to see Philip Roth on the list for his new book “The Plot Against America,” a historical fantasy that has won good reviews. Instead the finalists were: Lily Tuck’s “The News From Paraguay,” Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s “Madeleine Is Sleeping,” Kate Walbert’s “Our Kind: A Novel in Stories,” Christine Schutt’s “Florida” and Joan Silber’s “Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories.”

The award is organized by the National Book Foundation, which picks a different panel of judges each year from America’s top literary circles, and has ambitions to rival the Pulitzer Prize or Britain’s Booker Prize in prestige.

Herman Gollob, a former co-chairman of the National Book Foundation, said he had never heard of any of this year’s fiction finalists and was not encouraged to read them.

“It’s supposed to be an achievement award for the best that’s been done, not a feel-good award for aspiring writers,” he said.

The judges are barred from discussing their choices, a spokeswoman for the prizes said. There are four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature.