Important Name Missing From This Year's National Book Ciritics Circle Finalist

It is always special to receive an award or accolade for your passion. Recognition in writing is particularly very satisfying after the years of staring at the blank pages. Among many awards presented for excellency in literary, the National Book Critics Circle Award is one of the most prestigious honor.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the recently announced finalists for the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards surprisingly ommited one of the favorites. NBCC has drawn a fair amount of criticism for not selecting "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead in their top 5 list.

The book has already won the National Book Award for fiction and has also been selected by Oprah and naturally its absence in the Top 5 finalists for the NBCC Awards is quite baffling. The others selected for final are writer Micheal Chabon for"Moonglow", Louise Edrich for "La Rose", Adam Haslett for "Imagine me Gone", Ann Patchett for "Commonwealth" and Zadie Smith for "Swing Time".

In the Non-Fiction category, another national award winner Ibram X. Kendi's book "Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," went into the finalist list, where it is up against Viet Thanh Nguyen's "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," who won the Pulitzer Prize for his fictional novel "The Sympathizer" last year.

According to The New York Times, the awards will be given out at a ceremony at the New School Tishman Auditorium in New York City along with three more awards namely The Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement to Margaret Atwood,  the Nona Balakian citation for excellence in reviewing to Michelle Dean which he did for The Times and the John Leonard Prize to Yaa Gyasi for her debut novel "Homegoing."

The Awards' poetry section also boasted of big nominations likes Ishion Hutchinson for "House of Lords and Commons", Tyehimba Jess for the literary creation "Olio", Bernadette Mayer for "Works and Days", Robert Pinsky for "At the Foundling Hospital" and Monica Youn for "Blackacre" (Graywolf Press). The Award function will be a free public event as per sources.

It is a matter of disappointment for the connoisseurs of Colson Whitehead's writing as her critically acclaimed literary piece "The Underground Railroad" has found no place in this edition of the NBCC Awards. It must have been a tricky decision for the juries to overlook Whitehead's powerful novel considering it was a bestseller just a season ago. However, the other brilliant titles picked as finalists somewhat justify the decision.

TagsNational Book Critics Circle, L:iterature, Books, Novels, NBCC