Awards Round-Up: Nobel Prize, Quills, Man Booker Winners, NBA Finalists

The book industry's awards season moved into high gear this week with the announcement of the finalists for the National Book Awards and the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Quill Book Awards, and the U.K.'s Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Nobel Prize for Literature Awarded to Turkish Author Orhan Pamuk

On Thursday, October 11, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006. The Swedish Academy commended the author, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."

In 2005, Turkish authorities charged Pamuk with "public denigrating of Turkish identity" after he spoke to a Swiss newspaper about the 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians killed in Turkey. The charge caused widespread international protest and was subsequently dropped.

Pamuk was born on June 7, 1952 in Istanbul. Six of his works have been translated into English: The White Castle (Braziller); The Black Book (FSG); The New Life (FSG); My Name is Red (Knopf); Snow (Knopf), an August 2005 Book Sense Pick; and Istanbul: Memories and the City (Knopf).

For more information, visit nobelprize.org.

The 2006 National Book Award Finalists

On Wednesday, October 11, the 20 finalists for the 2006 National Book Awards were announced by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in front of his San Francisco bookstore, City Lights Books. The winners in each of four categories -- Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature -- will be announced at the National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony in Manhattan on November 15. Fran Lebowitz will host the dinner. Each winner will receive $10,000 and a bronze statue; each finalist will receive a $1,000 cash award and a bronze medal.

The finalists are:

Fiction

• Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon)
• A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus (Ecco/HarperCollins)
• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (FSG)
• Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta (Scribner/S&S)
• The Zero by Jess Walter (Judith Regan Books/HarperCollins) -- A September Book Sense Pick

Nonfiction

• At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch (S&S)
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Knopf)
• The Worst Hard Time:  The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin) -- A January Book Sense Pick
• Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present by Peter Hessler (HarperCollins)
• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (Knopf)

Poetry

• Averno by Louise Gluck (FSG)
• Chromatic by H.L. Hix (Etruscan Press)
• Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)
• Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey (New Directions)
• Capacity by James McMichael (FSG)

Young People's Literature

• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1:  The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick)
• Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (Front Street Books/Boyds Mills)
• Sold by Patricia McCormick (Hyperion Books for Children)
• The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin (Dial/Penguin)
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (First Second/Holtzbrinck)

To be eligible for a 2006 National Book Award, a book must have been published in the U.S. between December 1, 2005, and November 30, 2006, and must have been written by a U.S. citizen. This year the judges chose from a record 1,259 entries submitted by publishers. The Young People's Literature category had the biggest jump in entries with an additional 53 titles over last year.

At the National Book Awards ceremony, the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation will bestow its 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters upon poet Adrienne Rich, and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to Robert Silvers and, posthumously, Barbara Epstein, co-founders of The New York Review of Books.

For additional information about the 20 finalists and the special events that will take place during "National Book Awards Week," visit www.nationalbook.org.

The 2006 Quill Book Awards

The second Quill Awards were presented on Tuesday, October 10, at a red carpet ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The event was hosted by NBC News' Lester Holt and included appearances by Anderson Cooper, Liz Smith, Donald Trump, Stanley Tucci, Harry Connick, Jr., Dominick Dunne, Sue Monk Kidd, James Patterson, Judy Blume, Janet Evanovich, and Mary Matalin.

With the support of Reed Business Information, parent of Publishers Weekly, and the NBC Universal Television Stations, the foundation and its accompanying awards program was created to highlight the importance of reading. A short list of titles was selected by booksellers and librarians from across the country, who chose from among titles appearing on the Book Sense Picks lists or on Barnes & Noble bestseller lists, or those earning a starred review in Publishers Weekly, among other criteria.

Among the 20 winners of the 2006 Quill Book Awards are:

Book of the Year: Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life by Tyler Perry (Riverhead)

Debut Author of the Year: Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell (Little Brown) -- An October 2005 Book Sense Pick

General Fiction: A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore (William Morrow) -- An April Book Sense Pick

Biography/Memoir: Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan (William Morrow) -- A 2006 Book Sense Honor Book and a November 2005 Book Sense Pick

For the complete list of winners, visit www.thequills.org/2006.html.

The 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

On Tuesday, October 10, Kiran Desai won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic). Desai, 35, is the youngest woman to win the prize.

Born in India, Desai has family ties to the Man Booker Prize. Her mother Anita Desai was shortlisted three times but has never won.

Set both in the northeastern Himalayas and New York City, The Inheritance of Loss follows the tensions between an old anglophile judge and his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, as well as the trials of Biju, the son of the judge's cook, as he tries to evade U.S. immigration services.

Desai was born in India in 1971, and was educated in India, in England, and the U.S. She studied creative writing at Columbia University and is the author of the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (Anchor).

The Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded to the best full-length novel written in English by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland.