Chilean Bolano Posthumously Wins Book Critics Circle Award
By Laurie Muchnick for Bloomberg

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Roberto Bolano’s posthumous conquest of the literary world continues. The late Chilean writer was honored with the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award in fiction last night for his massive final novel, “2666.”

Marcela Valdes of the Book Critics Circle called “2666,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, a “sexy, apocalyptic vision of history,” saying it “ranks with ‘Moby-Dick’ and ‘Blood Meridian’ as a trenchant, kaleidoscopic examination of evil.”

Dexter Filkins was given the award in nonfiction for “The Forever War,” a memoir of his years as a reporter in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He thanked his employer, the New York Times, for helping him pay for “bribes to warlords and armed guards, and the tremendous quantities of alcohol we smuggled over the border.”

The award for autobiography went to Ariel Sabar for “My Father’s Paradise” (Algonquin), a memoir of the author’s father, a Jew who grew up in the Kurdish area of Iraq. Patrick French received the biography award for “The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul” (Knopf).

The winner in the criticism category was Seth Lerer, author of “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History From Aesop to Harry Potter” (University of Chicago Press). “There’s nothing like holding a book in your hand and meeting your child over a book,” he said.

For the rest f the story and a full list of wnners in all categories link here to Bloomberg..