Irish Author Makes National Book Critics Circle Shortlist
Irish Author Paul Murray has been shortlisted for the American National Book Critics Circle Fiction prize.
His book, Skippy Dies, which was also Booker longlisted in 2010 joins Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, David Grossman and Hans Keilson in the fiction category.
Skippy Dies was published by Faber & Faber in the US (but by Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton in the UK and Ireland). The Booker Prize team conducted an excellent interview with Murray here.
The full list of nominees is below.
Fiction
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad, Knopf
Jonathan Franzen. Freedom. Farrar, Straus And Giroux.
David Grossman, To The End Of The Land. Knopf.
Hans Keilson.Comedy In A Minor Key. Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Paul Murray. Skippy Dies. Faber & Faber.
Biography
Sarah Bakewell. How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne. Other Press
Selina Hastings. The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography. Random House.
Yunte Huang. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History. Norton.
Thomas Powers. The Killing Of Crazy Horse. Knopf.
Tom Segev. Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends. Doubleday
Autobiography
Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, Scribner
David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution, Twelve
Christopher Hitchens Hitch-22: A Memoir, Twelve
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning, Feminst Press
Patti Smith, Just Kids, Ecco
Darin Strauss, Half a Life, McSweeney’s
Criticism
Elif Batuman. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings. Harper
Clare Cavanagh. Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West. Yale University Press.
Susie Linfield. The Cruel Radiance. University of Chicago Press.
Ander Monson. Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir. Graywolf
Nonfiction
Barbara Demick. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Spiegel & Grau
S.C. Gwynne. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American, Scribner
Jennifer Homans. Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. Random
Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner
Isabel Wilkerson. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Random
Poetry
Anne Carson. Nox. New Directions
Kathleen Graber. The Eternal City. Princeton University Press
Terrance Hayes. Lighthead. Penguin Poets
Kay Ryan. The Best of It. Grove
C.D. Wright. One with Others: [a little book of her days]. Copper Canyon



