National Book Award winners named

With the United States fighting an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, stories of espionage and critiques of foreign policy were winners at the 58th annual National Book Awards in New York, Wednesday, November 14, 2007. Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, a 600-page journey through the physical, moral and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War, won the fiction award Wednesday night, while Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, won in nonfiction. Robert Hass’ Time and Materials, which includes several poems critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration, won for poetry. The prize for young people’s literature went to Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Each of the winners received $10,000. Runners-up received $1,000. Read more in The Washington Post.