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Han Kang, Angela Flournoy, Arundhati Roy nominated for National Book Critics Circle awards

NEW YORK (AP) — Novels by Nobel laureate Han Kang and Angela Flournoy and a memoir by Arundhati Roy are among the finalists for National Book Critics Circle awards.

The critics association announced nominees in eight competitive categories and three honorary winners, including the celebrated author-journalist Frances Fitzgerald, who will receive a lifetime achievement award.

“Out of the many hundreds of titles that our organization carefully considered this year, these singular and striking finalists rose to the top,” NBCC President Adam Dalva said in a statement Tuesday. “They interrogate the lives we lead, broaden our creative and social horizons, move us, and continually surprise us. Especially in this difficult time, every one of these writers and translators deserves to be celebrated -– and to be widely read.”

Han’s “We Do Not Part” (translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris) is a fiction finalist, along with Karen Russell’s “The Antidote”; Katie Kitamura’s “Audition”; Solvej Balle’s “On the Calculation of Volume (Book III),” translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell; and Flournoy’s “The Wilderness.”

Roy is a nominee in autobiography for “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” with other books cited including Geraldine Brooks’ “Memorial Days”; Beth Macy’s “Paper Girl”; Hanif Kureishi’s “Shattered”; and Miriam Toews’ “A Truce That Is Not Peace.”

Finalists in other categories range from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “To Save and to Destroy” for criticism to Nicholas Boggs’ “Baldwin: A Love Story” for best first book to Kevin Young’s “Night Watch” for poetry.

Winners will be announced March 26.

Dutch court allows rapper Ye concerts in the Netherlands

AMSTERDAM (AP) — A judge in Amsterdam on Wednesday rejected an appeal by a Jewish organization to block two performances by the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, ruling that the concerts are not a threat to public order. Ye has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, leaving Dutch authorities under mounting pressure to cancel the gigs on June 6 and 8. The Central Jewish Council filed the emergency lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that Ye should be banned from the country for voicing admiration for Adolf Hilter and selling T-shirts featuring swastikas. According to the Amsterdam District Court, there were no grounds to bar Ye from performing. “There are no indications that West’s presence in the coming days will lead to concrete public order dangers,” the court said in a statement.
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