Riverhead Vice President, Editorial Director Rebecca Saletan accepted the award on Hamid’s behalf at the awards ceremony on Tuesday night at the Morgan Library in Manhattan. Afterwards, Saletan talked with NPR’s Linda Holmes about EXIT WEST. You can find out more about the ceremony and watch Mohsin Hamid’s recorded speech here. Among Hamid’s remarks: "I'm really grateful to be honored by this prize in particular, which is a prize that looks to books to have an impact on the world." In a conversation with NPR host Michel Martin during the evening, Arimah gave advice to new writers: “Be radically honest with yourself and with everyone else.”

  FICTION  Mohsin Hamid, EXIT WEST  (Riverhead) Arundhati Roy, THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS  (Knopf)   NONFICTION Masha Gessen, THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)     BIOGRAPHY Howard Markel, THE KELLOGGS: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (Pantheon) Kenneth Whyte, HOOVER: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Knopf)   AUTOBIOGRAPHY Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, THE GIRL FROM THE METROPOL HOTEL: Growin Up in Communist Russia (Penguin)       View the complete list of NBCC finalists here. Winners of the NBCC awards will be announced on Thursday, March 15 in NYC at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium.  A finalists’ reading will be held on March 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the same location. Both events are free and open to the public. The National Book Critics Circle was founded in 1974 at New York’s Algonquin Hotel by a group of the most influential critics of the day, and awarded its first set of honors in 1975.  The NBCC now comprises more than 1,000 working critics and book-review editors throughout the country.  The NBCC annually bestows its awards in six categories, honoring the best books published in the past year in the United States.

Ms. Parker’s second book selection for Book Club Central will be part of the kickoff of the 12^th annual National Friends of Libraries Week, an initiative of United for Libraries to be held October 15-21, 2017. The celebration recognizes the advocacy and fundraising efforts of Friends of the Library groups across the country. Ms. Parker is an Honorary Lifetime Board Member of United for Libraries, a division of ALA. “United for Libraries is excited to feature Sarah Jessica Parker’s pick, EXIT WEST, as part of National Friends of Libraries Week,” said United for Libraries President Steve Laird, president of the Reference Division of Infogroup. “Friends groups do so much on behalf of their libraries, from funding summer reading programs to hosting author events and sponsoring book clubs. As a board member of United for Libraries and honorary chair of Book Club Central, Sarah Jessica Parker is raising awareness about the integral role of Friends groups in the library.” Book Club Central, designed in consultation with expert librarians, provides the public with the very best in reading. It debuted this past summer and since that time has become a place for engaging content and helpful information for book clubs and readers everywhere. [caption id="attachment_8059" align="alignleft" width="243"] Mohsin Hamid[/caption] Ms. Parker said, “Mohsin Hamid's EXIT WEST gives a deeply real, beautiful, intricate and electrifying look at what it means to be an immigrant right now. This tale of two people forced from their homeland and searching for a home elsewhere is transporting and illuminating. I was swept away by this gorgeous, otherworldly novel and I'm so excited to offer it as our second selection for Book Club Central, as I'm convinced every reader will feel the same.” As honorary chair of ALA’s Book Club Central, Ms. Parker will make her next book selection this winter. Ms. Parker’s inaugural pick for Book Club Central was No One is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts. “I might not have become an avid reader in my childhood if it were not for the libraries where I spent countless hours, and so I might not have become a writer either,” said Mr. Hamid. “I owe libraries a great deal. I am honored that Sarah Jessica Parker and the ALA have chosen EXIT WEST.” EXIT WEST is a timely love story that imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees — and the impossible choices that follow — as they’re driven from their homes to the uncertain embrace of new lands. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, this book tells a story of love, loyalty and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote, “Writing in spare, crystalline prose, Hamid conveys the experience of living in a city under siege with sharp, stabbing immediacy.” In a starred review, Booklist stated, “Caught in the whirlpool of refugees from around the world, Saeed and Nadia are tossed around like flotsam, the necessity of survival binding them together more than any starry-eyed notion of romance ever could…spellbinding writing.” The New York Review of Books wrote, “Skillful and panoramic from the outset… [A] meticulously crafted, ambitious story of many layers, many geopolitical realities, many lives and circumstances.” Ms. Parker launched SJP for Hogarth in partnership with Molly Stern, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Crown, Hogarth, Broadway, Crown Archetype, and Three Rivers Press. SJP for Hogarth will selectively publish high-quality works of fiction by both established writers and distinctive emerging voice with critical and commercial promise. In this role, Ms. Parker will be involved in all aspects of the publication process, from their selection and acquisition to cover design and promotion with her vision providing the editorial foundation for each publication. SJP for Hogarth’s first acquisition is  A PLACE FOR US, a debut novel by Fatima Mirza to be published in 2018. For more information, visit www.bookclubcentral.org and for SJP for Hogarth: www.sjpforhogarth.com

his extraordinary writing life, some twenty years now. He has the rare and precious gift, never more evident than in this new book, of being able not only to see into the future but to imagine, in the shape of real human lives, plausible and humane alternatives to the dark places where our worst impulses could lead us.” [caption id="attachment_5265" align="alignright" width="218"] Mohsin Hamid. Photo by Jillian Edelstein[/caption] From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, EXIT WEST goes on sale from Riverhead Books on March 7 and is an astonishingly timely love story that brilliantly imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees — and the impossible choices that follow — as they’re driven from their homes to the uncertain embrace of new lands.  Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, this book tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time. EXIT WEST is the #1 Indie Next Pick for March and has been lauded with tremendous advance praise. Here is a sampling: “Mohsin Hamid’s dynamic yet lapidary books have all explored the convulsive changes overtaking the world…His compelling new novel, EXIT WEST, is no exception…Writing in spare, crystalline prose, Hamid conveys the experience of living in a city under siege with sharp, stabbing immediacy….Hamid does a harrowing job of conveying what it is like to leave behind family members, and what it means to leave home, which, however dangerous or oppressive it’s become, still represents everything that is familiar and known.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[A] thought experiment that pivots on the crucial figure of this century: the migrant… [A] wry, intelligent novel… brilliantly managed… Hamid’s cautious, even fastidious prose makes the sudden flashes of social breakdown all the more affecting,” the author continues. “Evading the lure of both the utopian and the dystopian, Exit West makes some rough early sketches of the world that must come if we (or is it ‘you’?) are to avoid walling out the rest of the human race in the 21st century.” –The Financial Times “Writers should be wise, and Hamid is wiser than many… No novel is really about the cliche called ‘the human condition,’ but good novels expose and interpret the particular condition of the humans in their charge, and this is what Hamid has achieved here.” –The Washington Post “Hamid’s prose powerfully evokes the violence and anxiety of lives lived ‘under the drone-crossed sky.’ But his whimsical framing of the situation offers a hopeful metaphor for the future as the ‘natives’ come to accept their new neighbors.” –TIME Magazine