World Literary Awards

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National Book Critics Circle Awards ナショナル・ブック・クリティックス・サークル賞

Edition 1 (1976)

FictionNonfiction / General NonfictionPoetryMemoir/AutobiographyBiographyCriticismJohn Leonard Prize (Best First Book)Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement AwardNona Balakian Citation for Excellence in ReviewingGregg Barrios Book in Translation PrizeToni Morrison Achievement Award

Winners

21 people
John Gardner じょん・がーどなー Winner

A clash between an aging brother and sister in Vermont opens into a nested novel that probes isolation, violence, and the possibility of rescue.

A broken television lets another story into a closed house.

433 pages
family conflictviolencenested narrativeisolationredemption
Renata Adler れなーた・あどらー Nominee

The daily life of a young New York journalist, Jen Fain, is rendered through fragmentary observation and a highly mobile style.

Urban details take on sharp contours as fragments accumulate.

178 pages
urban lifejournalismfragmentationself-consciousnessthe 1970s
Vladimir Nabokov うらじーみる・なぼこふ Nominee

Thirteen stories marked by exile and memory are gathered into an English-language collection of Nabokov’s early Russian fiction.

Thirteen stories illuminate the quiet unease of exile.

179 pages
short fictionexilememorytransformationRussia
Cynthia Ozick しんしあ・おじっく Nominee

The title novella and three shorter works probe Jewish memory and moral unease with compressed intensity.

Three novellas trace the tension between belief and injury.

178 pages
novellasJewish identityguiltmemorycommunity
Richard Yates りちゃーど・いぇーつ Nominee

The lives of two increasingly estranged sisters unfold in parallel, leaving a long shadow of family disappointment.

Two sisters’ lives reveal a slow, quiet collapse.

229 pages
sistersfamilydisappointmenturban lifedisintegration
Maxine Hong Kingston まくしーん・ほん・きんぐすとん Winner

A memoir of Chinese American girlhood that layers family speech, legend, and lived experience.

Myth and family talk shape one woman’s coming of age.

224 pages
memoirChinese American identityfamilymythgender
George Dangerfield じょーじ・でいんじゃーふぃーるど Nominee
The Damnable Question: A Study in Anglo-Irish Relations

A historical study of the long tension between English and Irish political worlds.

It reads the imperial pressure and resistance behind the Irish question.

400 pages
historyIrelandempirepoliticsscholarship
Alex Haley あれっくす・へいりー Nominee

Beginning with slavery, the book traces a family history and turns memory and inheritance into a large-scale narrative.

A family story is traced back through the memory of slavery.

704 pages
slaveryfamily historymemoryAmerican historyinheritance
Irving Howe あーびんぐ・はう Nominee

A landmark history of East European Jewish immigrants in America and the communities they built.

Immigrant life rises into view as part of American urban history.

714 pages
immigration historyJewish lifeNew Yorklaborculture
Kenneth Libo けねす・りぼ Nominee

A landmark history of East European Jewish immigrants in America and the communities they built.

Immigrant life rises into view as part of American urban history.

714 pages
immigration historyJewish lifeNew Yorklaborculture
Richard Kluger りちゃーど・くるーがー Nominee

A massive legal history of the cases that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the struggle that followed.

The legal core of the civil rights struggle is rendered through vast documentation.

823 pages
civil rightslegal historysegregationeducationtrial
Elizabeth Bishop えりざべす・びしょっぷ Winner

Bishop’s late collection sketches the world with exact observation and a restrained voice.

Small poems leave the details of landscape and solitude shining behind.

50 pages
poetryobservationlandscapememorysolitude
Philip Levine ふぃりっぷ・れゔぃーん Nominee

Levine’s collection gathers powerful poems about labor, war, loss, and survival.

The poems work as if calling the lost by name.

69 pages
poetrylaborwarlosssurvival
Muriel Rukeyser みゅりえる・るきーざー Nominee
The Gates

A poetry collection in which political urgency and lyric intimacy move side by side.

Public history and private voice merge into a single resonance.

115 pages
poetrypoliticslyricsocietygender
Louis Simpson るいす・しんぷそん Nominee

A collection that turns shards of daily life into poems shaped by disorder and inward search.

It searches for shape inside disorder.

88 pages
poetrydisorderinterioritymemoryeveryday life
Richard Wilbur りちゃーど・うぃるばー Nominee

New poems animated by thought and playfulness showcase Wilbur’s control of intellect and rhythm.

Thinking itself becomes motion in the poem.

67 pages
poetryreflectionmeterintellectwit
Bruno Bettelheim ぶるーの・べってるはいむ Winner

A classic psychoanalytic study of how fairy tales support and shape the child’s emotional life.

Fairy tales are read as forces that shape the child’s inner life.

328 pages
fairy taleschild psychologypsychoanalysismythcriticism
Ada Louise Huxtable えいだ・るいーず・はくすたぶる Nominee

Essays on architecture and the city are traced with sharp observation and a distinctly urban voice.

Reading buildings becomes a way of reading the city itself.

304 pages
architecturecitycriticismessaysmodernism
Steven Marcus すてぃーヴん・まーかす Nominee

Essays that probe the meeting point of literature and society with historical awareness and critical clarity.

The reading of literature opens directly onto society.

331 pages
literary criticismsocietyhistoryessaysculture
Charles Rosen ちゃーるず・ろーぜん Nominee

A lucid study that unpacks Schoenberg’s music and modernism with elegant precision.

The inner structure of apparently abstract music comes into focus.

113 pages
music criticismSchoenbergmodernismformscholarship
E.B. White いー・びー・ほわいと Nominee

A collection of letters from 1908 to 1976 that reads as both a life story and a record of its era.

The letters themselves become a writer’s autobiography.

686 pages
letterswriterly lifeAmerican literaturethe 20th centuryautobiography