In a way, her moniker has allowed Shriver's writing to become androgynous and universal - she has written biting social criticism for the Guardian and The Economist with intimidating bravado, attacking the British government, American health care and other hot-button topics. Lionel Shriver changed her name from Margaret when she was just 15 years old, claiming that she was better suited for a more masculine name. Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan called the book 'precisely the kind of work of art for which the phrase 'oddly compelling' was invented,' and noted that 'although most of her characters are prisoners of the past, Krauss herself is a fiction pioneer, toying with fresh ways of rendering experience and emotion, giving us readers the thrill of seeing the novel stretched into amorphous new shapes.'īy Lionel Shriver Hardcover, 448 pages, Harper, list price: $25.99 The book travels from Jerusalem to London to Chile, touching on topics as bold as the Holocaust, Pinochet's secret police, and a widower's loneliness. Her third novel, Great House, tells the story of an antique writing desk passed between four interconnected generations. Fortunately for Krauss, she backs up all of the buzz with superb writing, playing with narratives of Jewish identity, aging, family secrets, foreign travel and the shifting nature of love.

With Susan Sontag as a devoted fan, Richard Gere fighting to adapt her first novel into film, and her marriage to literary star Jonathan Safran Foer, Krauss has had the kind of writing career that any MFA graduate would envy.

Feel free to pick your pony in anticipation of Wednesday night's big event - but remember that when it comes to great novels finding even greater audiences, everyone wins.īrooklyn-based novelist Nicole Krauss first gained national attention with her sophomore novel, The History of Love, which was published as an excerpt in The New Yorker in 2004. NPR was on site to record the happenings, and below are the readings from the five nominees for the fiction award. The night's MC was novelist Fiona Maazel (a former '5 Under 35' National Book Foundation honoree), who introduced readers as varied as punk legend Patti Smith and Australian Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey. But last night, inside the airy auditorium of the West Village's New School, the atmosphere was all celebration as the finalists for the NBA gathered to read short selections from their work. There will be triumphant winners, gracious runners-up, and publishers buzzing around in both victory and defeat. Wednesday night, in the grand Cipriani dining room on Wall Street, a small group of novelists, poets and nonfiction authors will see their lives change when the National Book Awards are announced.

One little medal, one big step for a writer's career.

Great house by nicole krauss