National Book Awards snub Jonathan Franzen

Peter Carey and Lionel Shriver are there, and so is Nicole Krauss – but Jonathan Franzen isn't. Franzen's acclaimed novel Freedom is the surprise omission from the finalists in the fiction category of this year's National Book Awards in the US, announced yesterday. The 20 finalists, a record 13 of whom are women, were named by author Pat Conroy at a ceremony held in the childhood home of writer Flannery O'Connor in Savannah, Georgia. Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, acknowledged that Franzen's much-praised novel – which received ecstatic US reviews and saw the author appearing on the cover of Time magazine – was "the big book of the year". But the instructions to judges were to ignore "outside chatter" and "just to look at the books", he said. The five novels chosen for the fiction award include Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America, which earlier this week was pipped to the Man Booker prize by Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, and Lionel Shriver's novel about illness and healthcare, So Much For That. Nicole Krauss's third novel Great House, a story of memory and loss which Viking will publish in the UK early next year, is also on the shortlist. Karen Tei Yamashita's novel about Asian-Americans, I Hotel, and Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule, which is set among horse trainers in West Virginia, are the remaining candidates. The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced on 17 November at a ceremony in New York, with each receiving $10,000 (£6,200). Among America's pre-eminent literary awards, they have run annually since 1950. The full list of award finalists is: Fiction Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule Nicole Krauss, Great House Lionel Shriver, So Much for That Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel Non-fiction Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea John W Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq Patti Smith, Just Kids Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward Megan K Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War Poetry Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City Terrance Hayes, Lighthead James Richardson, By the Numbers CD Wright, One With Others Monica Youn, Ignatz Young people's literature Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird Laura McNeal, Dark Water Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer