The 60th annual National Book Award Finalists have been announced for 2009. The prize is awarded to one work out of five nominees in each of four genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature). This year, 193 publishers submitted a total of 1,129 books for consideration.

International roots characterize the fiction finalists for this year’s National Book Awards. 

Among the five finalists are Colum McCann, the Irish-born author of “Let the Great World Spin,” a novel about a sprawling cast of characters in New York City in the 1970s; Daniyal Mueenuddin, who lives on a farm in the Punjab region of Pakistan, for “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”; and Marcel Theroux, who was born in Uganda and lives in London, for “Far North.” The other two finalists are Bonnie Jo Campbell, for “American Salvage,” a collection of short stories set in rural Michigan, and Jayne Anne Phillips, for “Lark and Termite,” a novel about a family buffeted by the fallout from the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

The nonfiction finalists focus on history and the natural world. Their books are “Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook,” a chronicle of the author David M. Carroll’s sojourn in the wetlands of New Hampshire; “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of the Species,” by Sean B. Carroll, about various people who have made important discoveries in evolutionary biology; Greg Grandin, for “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City,” about the automaker’s failed experiment to build a community in the Brazilian Amazon; Adrienne Mayor, for “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy,” a history of a brutal ruler in ancient times; and T. J. Stiles, for “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,” a biography of the man who founded a dynasty, presided over a railroad empire and built Grand Central Terminal in New York.

The winners, chosen by panels of authors in each category, are to be announced at a ceremony on Nov. 18.

From The New York Times, Arts Briefly, 10.15.09