National Book Critics Circle Awards Announced

"The National Book Critics Circle Awards":http://www.bookcritics.org/ were announced Thursday night in New York. The fiction prize went to Roberto Bolano for "2666," and the general nonfiction award went to Dexter Filkins for "The Forever War." Both works and their authors were recent subjects on the NewsHour. Bolano's translator, Natasha Wimmer, accepted the award on behalf of the Chilean author, who died in 2003. "Jeffrey Brown talked to Wimmer in January":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/01/conversation-roberto-bolanos-2666.html about Bolano and her work on the long and complex novel. "Filkins was on the NewsHour in October":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec08/filkins_10-01.html to talk about his book, which chronicled his experiences as a New York Times correspondent covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for much of the last decade. Other awards were given to Ariel Sabar for his autobiography, "My Father's Paradise"; Patrick French for "The World Is What It Is," a biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul; and Seth Lerer for "Children's Literature" in the criticism category. August Kleinzahler's "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" and Juan Felipe Herrera's "Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems" shared the poetry prize.