Die National Book Critics Circle Awards sind Literaturpreise US-amerikanischer Literaturkritiker. Sie werden seit 1975 jährlich für neue Bücher in englischer Sprache (auch Übersetzungen) verliehen, derzeit (2021) in den Kategorien Roman, Sachbuch, Lyrik, Autobiografie, Biografie, Kritik.
Der National Book Critics Circle, die Literaturkritikervereinigung hinter den Preisen, verleiht außerdem die Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, den Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award und den John Leonard Prize.
Preisträger
Roman 1975: E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime 1976: John Gardner, October Light 1977: Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon 1978: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever 1979: Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French 1980: Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus 1981: John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich 1982: Stanley Elkin, George Mills 1983: William Kennedy, Ironweed 1984: Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine 1985: Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist 1986: Reynolds Price, Kate Vaiden 1987: Philip Roth, The Counterlife 1988: Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories 1989: E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate 1990: John Updike, Rabbit at Rest 1991: Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres 1992: Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses 1993: Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying 1994: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries 1995: Stanley Elkin, Mrs. Ted Bliss 1996: Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds 1997: Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower 1998: Alice Munro, The Love of a Good Woman 1999: Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn 2000: Jim Crace, Being Dead 2001: W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz 2002: Ian McEwan, Atonement 2003: Edward P. Jones, The Known World 2004: Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 2005: E. L. Doctorow, The March 2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss 2007: Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 2008: Roberto Bolaño, 2666 2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall 2010: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad 2011: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision 2012: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 2013: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah 2014: Marilynne Robinson, Lila 2015: Paul Beatty, The Sellout 2016: Louise Erdrich, LaRose 2017: Joan Silber, Improvement 2018: Anna Burns, Milkman 2019: Edwidge Danticat, Everything Inside 2020: Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet 2021: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois 2022: Ling Ma, Bliss Montage: Stories 2023: Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home 2024: Hisham Matar, My Friends
Sachbuch 1975: R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography 1976: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts 1977: W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson 1978: Maureen Howard, Facts of Life und Garry Willis, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence 1979: Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace 1980: Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century 1981: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man 1982: Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson 1983: Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House 1984: Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope 1985: J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families 1986: Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams 1987: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb 1988: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 1989: Michael Dorris, The Broken Cord 1990: Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America 1991: Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women 1992: Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire 1993: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began 1994: Lynn Nicholas, The Rape of Europa 1995: Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action 1996: Jonathan Raban, Bad Land 1997: Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down 1998: Philip Gourevitch, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda 1999: Jonathan Weiner, Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior 2000: Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing 2001: Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper 2002: Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide 2003: Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy 2004: Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History 2005: Swetlana Alexandrowna Alexijewitsch, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster 2006: Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution 2007: Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present 2008: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War 2009: Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science 2010: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration 2011: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World 2012: Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity 2013: Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital 2014: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation 2015: Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic 2016: Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City 2017: Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America 2018: Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan, 2001–2016 2019: Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland 2020: Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire 2021: Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed 2022: Isaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act 2023: Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America 2024: Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Lyrik 1975: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 1976: Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III 1977: Robert Lowell, Day by Day 1978: L. E. Sissman, Hello, Darkness 1979: Philip Levine, Ashes und 7 Years from Somewhere 1980: Frederick Seidel, Sunrise 1981: A. R. Ammons, A Coast of Trees 1982: Katha Pollitt, Antarctic Traveller 1983: James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover 1984: Sharon Olds, The Dead and the Living 1985: Louise Glück, The Triumph of Achilles 1986: Edward Hirsch, Wild Gratitude 1987: C. K. Williams, Flesh and Blood 1988: Donald Hall, That One Day 1989: Rodney Jones, Transparent Gestures 1990: Amy Gerstler, Bitter Angel 1991: Albert Goldbarth, Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology 1992: Hayden Carruth, Collected Shorter Poems 1946–1991 1993: Mark Doty, My Alexandria 1994: Mark Rudman, Rider 1995: William Matthews, Time & Money 1996: Robert Hass, Sun Under Wood 1997: Charles Wright, Black Zodiac 1998: Marie Ponsot, The Bird Catcher 1999: Ruth Stone, Ordinary Words 2000: Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods 2001: Albert Goldbarth, Saving Lives 2002: B. H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest 2003: Susan Stewart, Columbarium 2004: Adrienne Rich, The School Among the Ruins 2005: Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven 2006: Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory 2007: Mary Jo Bang, Elegy 2008: Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light und August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City 2009: Rae Armantrout, Versed 2010: C. D. Wright, One with Others 2011: Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains 2012: D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys 2013: Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog 2014: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric 2015: Ross Gay, Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude 2016: Ishion Hutchinson, House of Lords and Commons 2017: Layli Long Soldier, Whereas 2018: Ada Limón, The Carrying 2019: Morgan Parker, Magical Negro 2020: Francine J. Harris, Here Is the Sweet Hand 2021: Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets 2022: Cynthia Cruz, Hotel Oblivion 2023: Kim Hyesoon, Phantom Pain Wings 2024: Anne Carson, Wrong Norma
Biografie/Autobiografie 1983: Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters 1984: Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–59 1985: Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life 1986: Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902–1941 1987: Donald Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Work, His World 1988: Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde 1989: Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt 1990: Robert A. Caro, Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson 1991: Philip Roth, Patrimony: A True Story 1992: Carol Brightman, Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World 1993: Edmund White, Genet 1994: Mikal Gilmore, Shot in the Heart 1995: Robert Polito, Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson 1996: Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes 1997: James Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War 1998: Sylvia Nassar, A Beautiful Mind 1999: Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White 2000: Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan 2001: Adam Sisman, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson 2002: Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place 2003: William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era 2004: Mark Stevens und Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master
Autobiografie 2005: Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents 2006: Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million 2007: Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying 2008: Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq 2009: Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End 2010: Darin Strauss, Half a Life 2011: Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace: A Memoir 2012: Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies 2013: Amy Wilentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti 2014: Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? 2015: Margo Jefferson, Negroland 2016: Hope Jahren, Lab Girl 2017: Xioulu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China 2018: Nora Krug, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home 2019: Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir 2020: Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning 2021: Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out 2022: Hua Hsu, Stay True: A Memoir 2023: Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon: A Memoir 2024: Alexei Anatoljewitsch Nawalny, Patriot: A Memoir
Biografie 2005: Kai Bird und Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 2006: Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon 2007: Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer 2008: Patrick French, The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul 2009: Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life 2010: Sarah Bakewell, How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer 2011: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life 2012: Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson 2013: Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World 2014: John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh 2015: Charlotte Gordon, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley 2016: Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life 2017: Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder 2018: Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous 2019: Josh Levin, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth 2020: Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World