Annal:2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel
- 2003 Guardian Award winner
- 2003 LATimes–1st Fiction winner
- 2003 Whitbread-Novel winner
- 2003 Carnegie shortlist
- 2003 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
- Score: 42.53
Christopher Boone is a fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a great deal about math and very little about human beings. When he finds his neighbors's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his world upside down.
Brick Lane: A Novel
- 2004 Kiriyama-Fiction finalist
- 2003 Booker shortlist
- 2003 LATimes–1st Fiction finalist
- 2003 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 24.54
Monica Ali’s gorgeous first novel is the deeply moving story of one woman, Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and transported to London at age eighteen to enter into an arranged marriage. Already hailed by the London Observer as “one of the most significant British novelists of her generation,” Ali has written a stunningly accomplished debut about one outsider’s quest to find her voice.
Vivid, profoundly humane, and beautifully rendered, Brick Lane captures a world at once unimaginable and achingly familiar. And it establishes Monica Ali as a thrilling new voice in fiction. As Kirkus Reviews said, “She is one of those dangerous writers who see everything.”
Goblin Fruit: Stories
- 2003 LATimes–1st Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.53
In the provocative title story an ambitious young actor assumes the identity of his dead brother, killed in a notorious Hollywood film accident. “Brilliant Disguise” tells the story of an Asian American masked wrestler, while in “Lost Years” two brothers must adopt false names while on the road and on the run. Whether portraying the hapless erosion of innocence or the musings of young men longing to be something other—a boy detective, a Jehovah’s Witness, a swan—the stories in Goblin Fruit announce a distinctive literary voice shaped by the pop dreams and…
A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: Stories
- 2003 LATimes–1st Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.53
In this remarkably assured and satisfying debut collection, John Murray seamlessly meshes fact with fiction, taking his inspiration from the worlds of science, medicine, and nature. The stories are set in intriguing locations across the globe. And yet, despite the pull of the outer world, these stories are all about the internal world of emotions—love, loss, obsession, and conflict—and about families and how they survive.
Vivid and alive, these stories reveal whole lives—characters caught between the past and the present, between different cultures, and between their intellects and emotions. Global in scope, classical in form, evocative of place, this rich collection marks an exciting and original debut.
There Are Jews in My House: Stories
- 2003 LATimes–1st Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.53
Innocence rounds the bend to experience in these beautifully shaped stories of Moscow and Brooklyn, which take up the worldview of the young and overlooked. The stunning Second World War story that opens the book is a masterpiece of ambivalence—about the simultaneous generosity and hypocrisy of Galina, a gentile Russian woman who offers safe harbor to a Jewish friend and her daughter during the German occupation. In “Love Lessons—Mondays, 9 A.M.,” a young math teacher is assigned to teach a girls’ sex education class, even though she herself is still awaiting her…
