Atonement Takes Book Critics Award for Fiction

In a February 26 ceremony, held at the New School in New York City, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) announced the winners of its annual book awards. The Fiction prize was awarded to British author Ian McEwan for Atonement (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese). McEwan's novel was a Top Ten March/April 2002 Book Sense 76 pick.

Other winners included: Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books), for General Nonfiction; Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II (Knopf) in the Biography/Autobiography category; B.H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (W.W. Norton) for Poetry; and William H. Gass, Tests of Time (Knopf), for Criticism.

Additionally, Richard Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was given the NBCC's Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and Maureen N. McLane, a junior fellow in English literature at Harvard's Society of Fellows, was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.