Annal:1984 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1984. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim
- 1984 LATimes–Fiction winner
- Score: 10.34
A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover—these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel.
Controlled by day, Tereza’s jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—of parents, husband, country, love…
- 1984 NBA–1st Novel winner
- 1985 PEN-faulkner finalist
- 1984 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- 1984 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 28.34
Richard and Sara Everton mortgage, sell and borrow, leave friends and country to settle in the Mexican village of Ibarra. They intend to spend the rest of their lives here, in a place neither of them has seen, to speak a language neither of them know. Their dream is to reopen Richard’s grandfather’s abandoned copper mine.
In a few short months work is advancing in the mine and their home is ready—then Richard learns he has six years to live.
Richard’s determination to make the mine and village prosper matches Sara’s effort to deny the diagnosis. While…
- 1984 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.34
In a small New England town in the late 1960s, there lived three witches Alexandra Spoffard, sculptress, could create thunderstorms. Jane Smart, a cellist, could fly. The local gossip columnist, Sukie Rougemont, could turn milk into cream.
Divorced but hardly celibate, content but always ripe for adventure, our three wonderful witches one day found themselves quite under the spell of the new man in town, Darryl Van Horne, whose hot tub was the scene of some rather bewitching delights.
To tell you any more, dear reader, would be to spoil the marvelous joy…
- 1984 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.34
Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband’s handler would like the press to forget that Inez’s father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.
As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events…
