The finalists for the US National Book Awards have been announced and have left many critics shocked by not including one of the year's most highly praised novels.
Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which was published to rave reviews in September and was declared 'self-evidently a modern classic' by the Guardian, was not included on the shortlist unveiled by the National Book Foundation yesterday (October 13th).
The finalists in the awards' fiction category include Man Booker-shortlisted Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey and Lionel Shriver's So Much for That.
Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule, Great House by Nicole Krauss and Karen Tei Yamashita's I Hotel are the remaining titles on the five-strong shortlist for the USD 10,000 (GBP 6,240) prize.
Works nominated for the National Book Awards non-fiction section include Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which won the 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, and Just Kids by rock star Patti Smith.
In 2009, Colum McCann won the National Book Awards fiction prize with Let the Great World Spin, while The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles scooped the non-fiction accolade.