The (US) National Book Critics Circle has announced the recipients of its book awards for publishing year 2012.

Winners include Robert A. Caro’s The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf) and Ben Fountain’s debut novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco).

The nonfiction winner was Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Scribner),  described as “a groundbreaking look at family relationships with children who are radically different from their parents’ expectations in physical, mental, and behavioral ways”, and Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press) won in the autobiography category.

D. A. Powell won in poetry for Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press) and, in criticism, Marina Warner won for Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press).

Recipients and biographies are on the National Book Critics Circle website.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, described as “the Catch 22 of the Iraq War”, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin.