Well, we don’t know yet, but we know who the top contenders are.

The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for 2012 this week. This year happened to be the first year the nominee’s were announced on TV. It wasn’t quite Oscar-style. No little white envelopes or ball gowns. And it was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, as opposed to prime time. Even so, there are few literary awards that outrank the National Book Awards in prestige and honor, with the exception of the Pulitzer Prize.

The winners aren’t always the most popular or bestselling books — or even the most well known authors. (Although, past winners include greats such as William Faulkner.) There were the heavy hitters, such as Junot Diaz, Anne Applebaum  and Dave Eggers, but there were also a few surprises and debut authors who critics are saying will soon be familiar faces in the lit world. Domingo Martinez, Kevin Powers and Ben Fountain to name a few.

Nominees must be written by an American author and published by and American publisher. And the finalists for the four categories are… cue the drum roll…

Photos courtesy of Riverhead Books, McSweeney's Books, Harper, Ecco and Little, Brown and Company

Fiction:

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

Photos courtesy of Doubleday, Random House, Knopf, Lyons Press and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nonfiction:

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 by Robert A. Caro

The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid

Photos courtesy of University of Chicago Press, Southern Illinois University Press, Etruscan Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and University of Iowa Press

Poetry:

Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations by David Ferry

Heavenly Bodies by Cynthia Huntington

Fast Animal by Tim Seibles

Night of the Republic by Alan Shapiro

Meme by Susan Wheeler

Photos courtesy of Margaret K. McElderry Books, Simon Pulse, Balzer+Bray, Scholastic and Flash Point

Young People’s Literature:

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

Bomb: The Race to Build — and Steal — the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

Which would you read or recommend? Or do you prefer a should-have-been that didn’t quite make the cut?

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