Honor roll:Fiction books of the 1980s
From AwardAnnals
Each of these Fiction books has received at least one award nomination during the 1980s decade. They are ranked by honors received.
See also:
- Honor roll:Fiction books: 1990s, full list.
- Honor roll:Fiction authors.
- Category:Fiction book awards.
- Works 1–10 of 369
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The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
- 1987 Clarke winner
- 1986 LATimes–Fiction winner
- 1985 Governor General's winner
- 1987 Prometheus finalist
- 1986 Booker shortlist
- 1986 Nebula nominee
- Score: 48.37
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.
One of the most important and influential novels of our time.
Neuromancer is the multiple award-winning novel that launched the astonishing career of William Gibson. The first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future, it is a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.
- 1982 LATimes–Fiction winner
- 1982 NBA–Fiction finalist
- 1982 PEN-faulkner finalist
- 1982 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- 1981 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 34.32
An emotional, dramatic and philosophical novel about Americans drawn into a small Central American country on the brink of revolution.
- 1990 PEN-faulkner winner
- 1989 NBCC–Fiction winner
- 1990 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- 1989 NBA–Fiction finalist
- Score: 32.4
In 1930’s New York, Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old high-school dropout, has captured the attention of infamous gangster Dutch Schultz, who lures the boy into his world of racketeering. The product of an East Bronx upbringing by his half-crazy Irish Catholic mother, after his Jewish father left them long ago, Billy is captivated by the world of money, sex, and high society the charismatic Schultz has to offer. But it is also a world of extortion, brutality, and murder, where Billy finds himself involved in a dangerous affair with Schultz’s girlfriend. Relive…
- 1982 Mythopoeic-Adult winner
- 1982 WFA–Novel winner
- 1982 Hugo-Novel nominee
- 1981 Nebula nominee
- Score: 32.32
Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable—an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in—and how it is to end.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: A Novel
- 1983 NBA–Fiction finalist
- 1983 PEN-faulkner finalist
- 1983 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- 1982 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- 1982 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 30.33
Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not her memory. Ever since 1944 when her husband left her, she has raised her three very different children on her own. Now grown, they have gathered together—with anger, with hope, and with a beautiful, harsh, and dazzling story to tell….
The hero of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1960), ten years after the hectic events described in Rabbit Redux (1971), has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. The time is 1979: Skylab is falling, gas lines are lengthening, the President collapses while running in a marathon, and double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of national confidence. Nevertheless, Harry Angstrom feels in good shape, ready to enjoy life at last—until his son, Nelson, returns from…
Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called “the greatest generation.” From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in “The Enormous Radio” to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill” and “The Swimmer,” Cheever tells us everything we need to know about “the pain and sweetness of life.”
- 1987 Pulitzer–fiction winner
- 1987 LATimes–Fiction finalist
- 1986 NBA–Fiction finalist
- 1986 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 28.37
During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father’s impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behing his sisters’ concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from this troubled past.
Peter…
- 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…
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