Specifically, Tom McCarthy won the fourth annual for his novel Remainder. (One of my favorite books of the past few years.)

“What’s the most intense, clear memory you have?” asks the narrator of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder. “The one you can see even if you close your eyes—really see, clear as in a vision?” Dispensing with Proustian reminiscence, McCarthy brazenly assumes the role of conceptual artist and literally reconstructs moments of time. In the same way that Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy tells its story through architecture in book form, Remainder is an art installation disguised as a brilliant novel.

Pretty solid group:

• Samedi the Deafness, Jesse Ball (Vintage)
• Sunless, Gerard Donovan (Overlook)
• Zeroville, Steve Erickson (Europa Editions)
• Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer)
• African Psycho, Alain Mabancko (Soft Skull)
• Remainder, Tom McCarthy (Vintage)
• The Revisionist, Miranda Mellis (Calamari)
• The Power of Flies, Lydie Salvayre (Dalkey Archive)
• The Meat and Spirit Plan, Selah Saterstrom (Coffee House Press)
• An Ordinary Spy, Joseph Weisberg (Bloomsbury)

Number on here that I’m not familiar with, but I’m pulling for the McCarthy and Salvayre . . . The winner—along with the reader’s choices—will appear in the June issue. (Just in time for BEA?)