Obama favourite on short list for Book Critics Circle awards

Author Marilynne Robinson, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gilead is a favourite of U.S. President Barack Obama, has made the short list of the National Book Critics Circle prizes for her sequel, Home.

Obama has frequently praised Gilead, which has been described as a deeply spiritual book. Home continues that story, but from the point of view of two other Gilead characters.

Gilead — which won the Pulitzer in 2005 — tells the story of an ailing preacher, John Ames, who writes a letter to his seven-year-old son. The book is essentially a meditation on fathers and children, and on faith itself.

Others joining Robinson in the fiction category are the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolano for 2666, Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project, M. Glenn Taylor's The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kittredge.

In the autobiography division, the finalists include:

• The House On Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper.
• Why I Came West by Rick Bass.
• The Bishop's Daughter by Honor Moore.
• The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham.
• My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar.

In general non-fiction, the nominated works are:

• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer.
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins.
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust.
• White Protestant Nation by Allan Lichtman.
• From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776 by George C. Herring.

Poetry nominees are:

• Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler.
• Half the World in Light by Juan Felipe Herrera.
• Sources by Devin Johnston.
• The Landscapist by Pierre Martory.
• Human Dark with Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy.

Two honorary awards were also announced on Saturday.

A lifetime achievement prize is to be handed to the American branch of PEN, the international writers and human rights organization, and a special award for criticism was given to Ron Charles of the Washington Post.

Charles's honour comes at a time when the paper is reputed to be reducing or eliminating its Sunday book review section.

Winners, who do not get any cash rewards, will be announced on March 12.

The book critics circle, founded in 1974, is a non-profit organization with more than 700 book reviewers registered as members.