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On National Book Award Finalists List, Jonathan Franzen Is Noticeably Absent

NPR | By David Gura
Published October 13, 2010 at 11:49 AM MDT

It's high season for literary prizes.

Yesterday, Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Today, the National Book Foundation named this year's finalists for the National Book Award.

The fiction finalists are Nicole Krauss' Great House, Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America, Lionel Shriver's So Much For That, Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule, and Karen Tei Yamshita's I Hotel. (Those links lead to NPR reviews.)

(To the surprise of many, Jonathan "Great American Novelist" Franzen's Freedom didn't make the cut.)

On the non-fiction list: Patti Smith's Just Kids, Justin Spring's Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and Megan K. Stack's Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War. (Those links lead to NPR interviews.)

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David Gura
Based in New York, David Gura is a correspondent on NPR's business desk. His stories are broadcast on NPR's newsmagazines, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, and he regularly guest hosts 1A, a co-production of NPR and WAMU.