The National Book Foundation (NBF) recently named the winners and the finalists of the 2008 National Book Awards. Here is a brief look at the best books of the past year.
National Book Award: Fiction, 2008
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen was named as this year's winner in fiction. Upon being named a finalist for this year's award, Matthiessen was asked by Bret Anthony Johnston of the NBF why he thought fiction still mattered, in spite of the state of the world. Matthiessen responded by saying that "fiction—the best fiction—will always matter because it strives to penetrate our great and terrible human nature, our human condition."
National Book Award: Nonfiction, 2008
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed was names as this year's winner in nonfiction. Meehan Christ, in an interview that appears on the NBF, asked Gordon-Reed how she interpreted the role of a nonfiction writer at this particular moment in time. Gordon-Reed answered by saying that "if people will be reading my work in the future, I would like them to be able to measure their world against the one I’m describing, to see how far we humans have, and have not, come from those days; what things endure, and what things do not."
National Book Award: Poetry, 2008
Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty was named as this year's winner in poetry. When Doty was nominated as a finalist he was asked by Craig Morgan Teicher of the NBF how he chose which poems would be included in this new compilation. Doty replied by saying that "there’s a way in which when you try to look at your own life over time, it’s very difficult to get enough distance to make any kind of assessment of the value of what you’ve done over the years."
National Book Award: Young Adult Literature, 2008
What I Saw and How I Lived by Judy Bludnell was selected as this year's winner in young adult literature. When Rita Williams-Garcia of the NBF spoke to Blundell, she inquired into how the author gets the material for her books. Bludnell responded by saying that she was influenced by both film noir and by going "back to the source—the books, magazines, newspapers, and movies of the forties."
2008 National Book Award Finalists
The runners-up of this year's awards include the following honorable selections:
Fiction Finalists
- The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
- Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
- Home by Marilynne Robinson
- The End by Salvatore Scibona
Nonfiction Finalists
- The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
- The Dark Side: How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
- Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler
- The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham
Poetry Finalists
- Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart
- Creatures of a Day by Reginald Gibbons
- Without Saying by Richard Howard
- Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith
Young Adult Fiction Finalists
- Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
- The Underneath by Kathy Appelt
- The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
- The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
This year the NBF received more than 1,200 books from over 200 publishers, from which the list of winners and finalists were chosen by a group of five peers. The finalists were announced on October 15, 2008 and the winners were announced on November 19, 2008 during the awards ceremony in New York.
