Best Books Record Number Of Publishers Enter Titles In Annual National Book Awards Competition

Finalists for the National Book Awards have been announced, and they include familiar names like Philip Roth, as well as a 26-year-old newcomer, Edwidge Danticat, who came to the United States from Haiti at age 12.

Despite worries in the book business about the effect of consolidation on publishing, a record number of publishers - 168 in all - submitted titles for this year’s competition.

Roth is up for the fiction award for his novel “Sabbath’s Theater” (Houghton Mifflin). Danticat is up for the same award, for her collection of stories “Krik? Krak!,” published by Soho Press. Roth won the award in 1960 for “Goodbye, Columbus,” and has been a finalist four times since.

A special award, the 1995 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which includes $10,000, will be given to the historian David McCullough, who has won two National Book Awards.

These are the other finalists for the fiction prize:

Madison Smartt Bell, for “All Souls’ Rising” (Pantheon), about a Haitian slave rebellion.

Rosario Ferre, for “The House on the Lagoon” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a novel about a Puerto Rican family.

Stephen Dixon, for “Interstate” (Henry Holt & Co.), about the effects of violence on a family.

These are the finalists for the nonfiction award:

Dennis Covington, for “Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia” (Addison-Wesley), about a spiritual journey after the publication of Covington’s article for The New York Times about the 1991 trial of an Alabama preacher accused of trying to murder his wife with rattlesnakes.

Daniel C. Dennett, for “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life” (Simon & Schuster), a defense of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Jonathan Harr, for “A Civil Action” (Random House), an account of a legal action by families in Woburn, Mass., against W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods.

Tina Rosenberg, for “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism” (Random House).

Maryanne Vollers, for “Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers,” (Little, Brown & Co.).

In the poetry category, the finalists are a seasoned group, nominated in all cases for major books of selected or collected poems. These are the finalists.

Barbara Howes, for “Collected Poems, 1945-1990” (University of Arkansas Press).

Josephine Jacobsen, for “In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems” (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Donald Justice, for “New and Selected Poems” (Alfred A. Knopf).

Stanley Kunitz, for “Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected” (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Gary Soto, for “New and Selected Poems” (Chronicle Books).

The finalists for the awards, which are administered by the National Book Foundation, each receive $1,000. The winners will receive $10,000 each along with a crystal sculpture. All the winners will be announced at a dinner at the Plaza Hotel on Nov. 15.