Annal:1992 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Mao II

Don DeLillo

• 1992 PEN-faulkner winner
• 1992 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
• Score: 16.42

In MAO II, Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence when he gets the chance to aid a hostage trapped in a basement in war-torn Beirut, a nightscape of Semtex explosives. Gray’s dangerous departure leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott’s lover - and Bill’s. MAO II is a series of set-pieces built around the theme of searching for meaning in a post-modern world.

Frog: A Novel

Stephen Dixon

• 1992 PEN-faulkner finalist
• 1991 NBA–Fiction finalist
• Score: 12.42

The esteemed and prescient critic John Hollander wrote that “Frog represents a new phase of Stephen Dixon’s work, and manifests a new concentration of creative power and unfailing rhetorical control, and it should certainly bring him the broadened recognition which is already so deep a one.”

Extraordinary People: A Novel

Paul Gervais

• 1992 PEN-faulkner finalist
• Score: 6.42

 

White People

Allan Gurganus

• 1991 LATimes–Fiction winner
• 1992 PEN-faulkner finalist
• Score: 16.41

In these eleven stories, Allan Gurganus—author of the highly acclaimed Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All—gives heartbreaking and hilarious voice to the fears, desires and triumphs of a grand cast of Americans.

Here are war heroes bewildered by the complex negotiations of family life, former debutantes called upon to muster resources they never knew they had, vacationing senior citizens confronted by their own bravery, and married men brought up short by the marvelous possibilities of entirely different lives. Written with flair, wit, and deep humanity, this award-winning volume confirms Allan Gurganus as one of the finest writers of our time.

The Almanac Branch: A Novel

Bradford Morrow

• 1992 PEN-faulkner finalist
• Score: 6.42

The Almanac Branch confirms Bradford Morrow’s gifts as one of our most original writers. Recreating the Gothic story with new twists, Morrow tells the tale of Grace Brush, a woman suffering from hallucinatory migraines, who comes to terms with herself while facing the controlling men of her family and the dark secrets they have been hiding