Over the weekend, the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for their 2008 book awards. The winners will be announced on March 12, 2009 at the New School in New York City. Follow this link for the complete listings in Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, and Poetry.

The fiction finalists were: Roberto Bolano, 2666; Marilynne Robinson, Home;
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project; M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart; Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge. Last year, Junot Diaz won the Fiction award for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

The non-fiction finalists were: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War; Jane Mayer, The Dark Side; Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation; George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776.