National Book Award

Der National Book Award (NBA) ist neben dem Pulitzer-Preis der renommierteste Literaturpreis der USA.

Er wird seit 1950 jährlich vergeben; zurzeit in den vier Kategorien Roman, Sachbuch, Lyrik und Jugendbuch. Zuvor gab es eine Anzahl weiterer Kategorien, die aber nach und nach aufgegeben wurden. Weiterhin werden jährlich zwei Preise für das Lebenswerk vergeben, die Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters und der Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

Zwischen 1980 und 1986 wurde der Preis unter der Bezeichnung American Book Award verliehen, seit 1989 wird der NBA von der eigens zu diesem Zweck gegründeten National Book Foundation verliehen. Für jede Kategorie gibt es eine fünfköpfige unabhängige Jury.

Der Preisträger muss amerikanischer Staatsbürger sein; sein Werk muss in englischer Sprache verfasst und in den USA verlegt sein. Der Preis ist mit 10.000 US-Dollar dotiert.

Preisträger

Kategorie Prosa (Fiction)

1950	Nelson Algren	The Man With The Golden Arm
1951	William Faulkner	The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
1952	James Jones	From Here to Eternity
1953	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man, dt. Der unsichtbare Mann
1954	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March
1955	William Faulkner	A Fable
1956	John O’Hara	Ten North Frederick
1957	Wright Morris	The Field of Vision
1958	John Cheever	The Wapshot Chronicle
1959	Bernard Malamud	The Magic Barre
1960	Philip Roth	Goodbye, Columbus
1961	Conrad Richter	The Waters of Kronos
1962	Walker Percy	The Moviegoer
1963	J. F. Powers	Morte D'Urban
1964	John Updike	The Centaur
1965	Saul Bellow	Herzog
1966	Katherine Anne Porter	The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
1967	Bernard Malamud	The Fixer
1968	Thornton Wilder	The Eighth Day
1969	Jerzy Kosinski	Steps
1970	Joyce Carol Oates	Them
1971	Saul Bellow	Mr. Sammler's Planet
1972	Mary Flannery O’Connor	The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
1973	John Barth	Chimera
1973	John Williams	Augustus
1974	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow (letztlich nicht verliehen)
1974	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories
1975	Robert Stone	Dog Soldiers
1975	Thomas Williams	The Hair of Harold Roux
1976	William Gaddis	JR
1977	Wallace Stegner	The Spectator Bird
1978	Mary Lee Settle	Blood Ties
1979	Tim O’Brien	Going After Cacciato
1980 Hardcover	William Styron	Sophie's Choice
1980 Paperback	John Irving	The World According to Garp, dt. Garp und wie er die Welt sah
1981 Hardcover	Wright Morris	Plains Song
1981 Paperback	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever
1982 Hardcover	John Updike	Rabbit is Rich
1982 Paperback	William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow
1983 Hardcover	Alice Walker	The Color Purple
1983 Paperback	Eudora Welty	Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
1984	Ellen Gilchrist	Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories
1985	Don DeLillo	White Noise
1986	E. L. Doctorow	World's Fair
1987	Larry Heinemann	Paco's Story
1988	Pete Dexter	Paris Trout
1989	John Casey	Spartina
1990	Charles Richard Johnson	Middle Passage
1991	Norman Rush	Mating
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses
1993	Annie Proulx	The Shipping News
1994	William Gaddis	A Frolic of His Own
1995	Philip Roth	Sabbath's Theater
1996	Andrea Barrett	Ship Fever and Other Stories
1997	Charles Frazier	Cold Mountain
1998	Alice McDermott	Charming Billy
1999	Ha Jin	Waiting
2000	Susan Sontag	In America
2001	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections
2002	Julia Glass	Three Junes
2003	Shirley Hazzard	The Great Fire
2004	Lily Tuck	The News from Paraguay
2005	William T. Vollmann	Europe Central
2006	Richard Powers	The Echo Maker
2007	Denis Johnson	Tree of Smoke
2008	Peter Matthiessen	Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend
2009	Colum McCann	Let the Great World Spin
2010	Jaimy Gordon	Lord of Misrule
2011	Jesmyn Ward	Salvage the Bones
2012	Louise Erdrich	The Round House
2013	James McBride	The Good Lord Bird

Kategorie Sachbuch (Nonfiction)

1950	Ralph L. Rusk	Ralph Waldo Emerson
1951	Newton Arvin	Herman Melville
1952	Rachel Carson	The Sea Around Us
1953	Bernard A. De Voto	The Course of Empire
1954	Bruce Catton	A Stillness at Appomattox
1955	Joseph Wood Krutch	The Measure of Man
1956	Herbert Kubly	An American in Italy
1957	George F. Kennan	Russia Leaves the War
1958	Catherine Drinker Bowen	The Lion and the Throne
1959	J. Christopher Herold	Misterss to an Age: A Life of Madame De Stael
1960	Richard Ellmann	James Joyce
1961	William L. Shirer	The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, dt. Aufstieg und Fall des Dritten Reiches
1962	Lewis Mumford	The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects
1963	Leon Edel	Henry James, Vol. II: The Conquest of London; Henry James, Vol. III: The Middle Years
1964	Aileen Ward	John Keats: The Making of a Poet
1964	William Hardy McNeill	The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
1964	Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev	Man-made America
1965	Eleanor Clark	Oysters of Lockmariaquer
1965	Louis Fischer	The Life of Lenin
1965	Norbert Wiener	God and Golem, Inc: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion
1966	Janet Flanner	Paris Journal, 1944–1965
1966	Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr	A Thousand Days
1967	Justin Kaplan	Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography
1967	Peter Gay	The Enlightenment, Vol. I: An Interpretation the Rise of Modern Paganism
1967	Oscar Lewis	La Vida
1968	William Troy	Selected Essays
1968	George F. Kennan	Memoirs: 1925–1950
1968	Jonathan Kozol	Death at an Early Age
1969	Norman Mailer	The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
1969	Winthrop D. Jordan	White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812
1969	Robert Lifton	Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima
…	…	…
1980 Hardcover	Tom Wolfe	The Right Stuff
1980 Paperback	Peter Matthiessen	The Snow Leopard
1981 Hardcover	Maxine Hong Kingston	China Men
1981 Paperback	Jane Kramer	The Last Cowboy
1982 Hardcover	Tracy Kidder	The Soul of a New Machine
1982 Paperback	Victor S. Navasky	Naming Names
1983 Hardcover	Fox Butterfield	China: Alive in the Bitter Sea
1983 Paperback	James Fallows	National Defense
1984	Robert V. Remini	Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845
1985	J. Anthony Lukas	Common Ground: A Turbulate Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
1986	Barry Lopez	Arctic Dreams
1987	Richard Rhodes	The Making of the Atom Bomb
1988	Neil Sheehan	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
1989	Thomas L. Friedman	From Beirut to Jerusalem
1990	Ron Chernow	The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
1991	Orlando Patterson	Freedom
1992	Paul Monette	Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
1993	Gore Vidal	United States: Essays 1952–1992
1994	Sherwin B. Nuland	How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter
1995	Tina Rosenberg	The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism
1996	James Carroll	An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us
1997	Joseph J. Ellis	American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
1998	Edward Ball	Slaves in the Family
1999	John W. Dower	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
2000	Nathaniel Philbrick	In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Waleship Essex
2001	Andrew Solomon	The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
2002	Robert A. Caro	Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
2003	Carlos Eire	Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
2004	Kevin Boyle	Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
2005	Joan Didion	The Year of Magical Thinking, dt. Das Jahr magischen Denkens
2006	Timothy Egan	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
2007	Tim Weiner	Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
2008	Annette Gordon-Reed	The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
2009	T. J. Stiles	The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
2010	Patti Smith	Just Kids
2011	Stephen Greenblatt	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
2012	Katherine Boo	Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
2013	George Packer	The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Kategorie Lyrik (Poetry)

1950	William Carlos Williams	Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems
1951	Wallace Stevens	The Auroras of Autumn
1952	Marianne Moore	Collected Poems
1953	Archibald MacLeish	Collected Poems, 1917–1952
1954	Conrad Aiken	Collected Poems
1955	Wallace Stevens	The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
1956	W. H. Auden	The Shield of Achilles
1957	Richard Wilbur	Things of the World
1958	Robert Penn Warren	Promises: Poems, 1954–1956
1959	Theodore Roethke	Words for the Wind
1960	Robert Lowell	Life Studies
1961	Randall Jarrell	The Woman at the Washington Zoo
1962	Alan Dugan	Poems
1963	William Stafford	Traveling Through the Dark
1964	John Crowe Ransom	Selected Poems
1965	Theodore Roethke	The Far Field
1966	James Dickey	Buckdancer's Choice: Poems
1967	James Merrill	Nights and Days
1968	Robert Bly	The Light Around the Body
1969	John Berryman	His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
1970	Elizabeth Bishop	The Complete Poems
1971	Mona Van Duyn	To See, To Take
1972	Howard Moss	Selected Poems
1972	Frank O'Hara	The Collected Works of Frank O'Hara
1973	A. R. Ammons	Collected Poems, 1951–1971
1974	Allen Ginsberg	The Fall of America: Poems of these States, 1965–1971
1974	Adrienne Rich	Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972
1975	Marilyn Hacker	Presentation Piece
1976	John Ashbery	Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
1977	Richard Eberhart	Collected Poems, 1930–1976
1978	Howard Nemerov	The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov
1979	James Merrill	Mirabell: Book of Numbers
1980	Philip Levine	Ashes
1981	Lisel Mueller	The Need to Hold Still
1982	William Bronk	Life Supports: New and Collected Poems
1983	Galway Kinnell	Selected Poems
1983	Charles Wright	Country Music: Selected Early Poems
1991	Philip Levine	What Work Is
1992	Mary Oliver	New & Selected Poems
1993	A. R. Ammons	Garbage
1994	James Tate	A Worshipful Company of Fletchers
1995	Stanley Kunitz	Passing Through: The Later Poems
1996	Hayden Carruth	Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey
1997	William Meredith	Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems
1998	Gerald Stern	This Time: New and Selected Poems
1999	Ai	Vice: New & Selected Poems
2000	Lucille Clifton	Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry
2001	Alan Dugan	Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000
2002	Ruth Stone	In the Next Galaxy
2003	C.K. Williams	The Singing
2004	Jean Valentine	Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003
2005	W. S. Merwin	Migration
2006	Nathaniel Mackey	Splay Anthem
2007	Robert Hass	Time and Materials: Poems, 1997–2005
2008	Mark Doty	Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems
2009	Keith Waldrop	Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy
2010	Terrance Hayes	Lighthead
2011	Nikky Finney	Head Off & Split
2012	David Ferry	Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
2013	Mary Szybist	Incarnadine

Kategorie Jugendbuch (Young People's Literature)

1996	Victor Martinez	Parrott In the Oven: MiVida (dt. Der Papagei im Ofen)
1997	Han Nolan	Dancing on the Edge
1998	Louis Sachar	Holes (dt. Löcher)
1999	Kimberly Willis Holt	When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (dt. Sommerblues)
2000	Gloria Whelan	Homeless Bird
2001	Virginia Euwer Wolff	True Believer (dt. Fest dran glauben)
2002	Nancy Farmer	The House of the Scorpion (dt. Das Skorpionenhaus)
2003	Polly Horvath	The Canning Season (dt. Der Blaubeersommer)
2004	Pete Hautman	Godless
2005	Jeanne Birdsall	The Penderwicks (dt. Die Penderwicks)
2006	Matthew Tobin Anderson	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
2007	Sherman Alexie	The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (dt. Das absolut wahre Tagebuch eines Teilzeit-Indianers)
2008	Judy Blundell	What I Saw and How I Lied (dt. Die Lügen, die wir erzählten)
2009	Phillip Hoose	Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
2010	Kathryn Erskine	Mockingbird
2011	Thanhha Lai	Inside Out & Back Again
2012	William Alexander	Goblin Secrets
2013	Cynthia Kadohata	The Thing About Luck

Kategorie Kinderbuch

1969	Meindert DeJong	Journey from Peppermint Street
1970	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw (dt. Eine Kindheit in Warschau)
1971	Lloyd Alexander	The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian (dt. Sebastians wundersame Abenteuer)
1972	Donald Barthelme	The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn (dt. Mathilda und die Feuerwehr, die nicht ganz so war, wie sie sein sollte)
1973	Ursula K. Le Guin	The Farthest Shore (dt. Das ferne Ufer)
1974	Eleanor Cameron	The Court of the Stone Children
1975	Virginia Hamilton	M. C. Higgins the Great (dt. M. C. Higgins, der Große)
1976	Walter D. Edmonds	Bert Breen's Barn
1977	Katherine Paterson	The Master Puppeteer (dt. Puppenspieler und Banditen)
1978	Judith & Herbert Kohl	The View from the Oak (dt. Mit den Augen einer Biene: so nehmen Tiere ihre Umwelt wahr)
1979	Katherine Paterson	The Great Gilly Hopkins (dt. Gilly Hopkins)
1980 Hardcover	Joan W. Blos	A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal
1980 Paperback	Madeleine L’Engle	A Swiftly Tilting Planet (dt. Durch Zeit und Raum)
1981 Hardcover	Betsy Byars	The Night Swimmers (dt. Die geheimnisvolle Mondnacht)
1981 Paperback	Beverly Cleary	Ramona and Her Mother (dt. Ramona liebt Mama − meistens)
1982 Hardcover	Lloyd Alexander	Westmark (dt. Aufruhr in Westmark)
1982 Paperback	Ouida Sebestyen	Words by Heart
1983 Hardcover	Jean Fritz	Homesick: My Own Story (dt. Kleines Herz in China)
1983 Paperback	Paula Fox	A Place Apart
1983 Paperback	Joyce Carol Thomas	Marked by Fire

Kategorie Bilderbuch

1982 Hardcover	Maurice Sendak	Outside Over There (dt. Als Papa fort war)
1982 Paperback	Peter Spier	Noah's Ark (dt. Noahs Arche in Bildern)
1983 Hardcover	Barbara Cooney	Miss Rumphius (dt. Die Lupinenfrau)
1983 Hardcover	William Steig	Doctor De Soto (dt. Doktor De Soto)
1983 Paperback	Mary Ann Hoberman & Betty Fraser (ill.)	A House is a House for Me

Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letter (Lebenswerk)

• 2012: Elmore Leonard

Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literarary Community (Lebenswerk)

• 2012: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Chef der New York Times Corporation.

Siehe auch

• Liste amerikanischer Schriftsteller
• Amerikanische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur

Weblinks

• Website der National Book Foundation (englisch)
• Gewinner des National Book Award pro Jahr
• Liste der Gewinner des National Book Award (1950–1979) (englisch)
• Liste der Gewinner des National Book Award (1980–2006) (englisch)