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Book on Indian girl gets award

The National Book Awards' young people's literature award went to Gloria Whelan for Homeless Bird, the story of a girl in India married and widowed when just 13, in New York on Wednesday.

``I think books saved my life. Books saved the life of [the girl] Koly. I think books save the lives of a lot of children,'' Whelan said when accepting the award.

Susan Sontag won the prize for fiction for In America.

Based on the life of the 19th century stage performer Helena Modjeska, it was Sontag's first novel since the 1992 best seller The Volcano Lover.

Other fiction finalists include Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde, based on the life of Marilyn Monroe; Francine Prose's Blue Angel and Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love. Alan Lightman was nominated for The Diagnosis.

The non-fiction award went to Nathaniel Philbrick for In the Heart of the Sea, the story of the whaling ship tragedy that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Runners-up included 92-year-old Jacques Barzun, author of the From Dawn to Decadence and Patrick Tierney for Darkness in El Dorado.

The poetry prize went to Lucille Clifton for Blessing the Boats and Ray Bradbury, known for Fahrenheit 451 and the science fiction classic The Martian Chronicles received an honorary medal.

The awards are sponsored by the National Book Foundation. The winners get $10,000, while other finalists get $1,000.

EXTERNAL LINKS
A review of Homeless Bird

National Book Awards 2000 Winners

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