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Matthiessen takes National Book Award

Peter Matthiessen has won the U.S. National Book Award in the fiction category for Shadow Country (Modern Library/Random House) – the first NBA win in nearly 30 years for the octogenarian author. The book’s nomination inspired a mini-controversy, since it’s actually a revision of an earlier trilogy of novels, now condensed into a single volume. As Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, told The New York Times:

“We allow collections of previously published material [...] Collected poems, collected essays, short-story collections – books like that. We don’t allow reprints, but we didn’t consider this a reprint. There’s a lot of new writing here.”

Other NBA winners last night:

• Non-fiction: The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton/Penguin Canada)
• Poetry: Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
• Young people’s literature: What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (Scholastic)

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