Annal:1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Pulitzer Prize in the year 1988. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 1988 Pulitzer–fiction winner
- 1987 NBA–Fiction finalist
- 1987 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 22.38
At the center of Toni Morrison’s fifth novel is an almost unspeakable act of horror and heroism: a woman brutally kills her infant daughter rather than allow her to be enslaved. The woman is Sethe, and the novel traces her journey from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War.
Woven into this circular, mesmerizing narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe’s past: the incredible cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom. Just as Sethe finds the past too painful to remember, and the future just “a matter of keeping the past at bay,” her story is almost too painful to read. Yet Morrison manages to imbue the wreckage of her characters’ lives with compassion, humanity, and humor.
Part ghost story, part history lesson, part folk tale, Beloved finds beauty in the unbearable, and lets us all see the enduring promise of hope that lies in anyone’s future.
- 1988 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- Score: 6.38
From the author of Le Divorce comes another alluring, fast-paced novel of an American woman abroad. While visiting Iran with her husband, Chloe Fowler is left to travel alone when he is summoned home unexpectedly. Initially drawn to the life she encounters in Iran, Chloe soon experiences frightening events that exposes the darker side of this “colonial life”.
That Night: A Novel
- 1988 PEN-faulkner finalist
- 1988 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- 1987 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- 1987 NBA–Fiction finalist
- Score: 24.38
Suburban Long Island in the 60s is the setting for this story of the binding love between a young couple, and the drastic actions they must take when she becomes pregnant. From the author of The Bigamist’s Daughter.
