CHAUTAUQUA FINALISTS: Chautauqua Institution announced eight exceptional books as the 2021 finalists for The Chautauqua Prize, now in its 10th year. Those works include:

— Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss (Riverhead Books) : Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist Eula Biss embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into.

— The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Harper Collins) : Based on the life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman, the book explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

— The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories, by Danielle Evans (Riverhead Books) : Danielle Evans’ latest work zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history, exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively.

— Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi (Alfred A. Knopf) : Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief — a novel about faith, science, religion, love.

The other four finalists will be highlighted in tomorrow’s RTS.