Year in books: a look back at books that captured our attention.

THE AWARDS

Nobel Prize for Literature

Halldor Kiljan Laxness

(Iceland, 1902-1998)

Laxness was honored "for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland." He is best known for his 1930s novels, including Salka Valka (1932) and Independent People (1934), which depict the common folk of Iceland.

Pulitzer Prize (FICTION) & National Book Award (FICTION)

A Fable

By William Faulkner

In this allegorical novel, a corporal representing Jesus provokes a mutiny in the French trenches during World War I. The fighting stops, but the corporal is executed under the premise that war is an inevitable part of human nature. Faulkner, who spent more than a decade on this work, considered it his masterpiece.

Pulitzer Prize (DRAMA)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By Tennessee Williams

About family pettiness, greed, and sexuality, this famous play, controversial in its time, features a dysfunctional, wealthy Southern family. Big Daddy Pollitt, the patriarch, celebrates his last birthday as his daughter-in-law Maggie finds herself in an unfulfilled marriage to an alcoholic husband vying for his father's inheritance.

Pulitzer Prize (HISTORY)

Great River

The Rio Grande in North American History

A classic in the history of the American Southwest, Great River explores the land and the people that bordered the Rio Grande--from the pueblo culture of the Anasazi to the Spanish and the Anglo Europeans.

National Book Award (NONFIC)

The Measure of Man on Freedom, Human Values, Survival, and the Modern Temper

By Joseph Wood Krutch

Adhering to themes of his classic social analysis, The Modern Temper (1929), Krutch--a literary critic, social philosopher, and natural history writer--asserts that at the very least, people possess two qualities: reason (the capacity to create and act upon individual values) and choice.

Edgar

The Long Goodbye

By Raymond Chandler

In this hard-boiled detective novel, PI Philip Marlowe (from 1939's The Big Sleep) unwittingly helps an acquaintance flee a crime--and is then accused of acting as an accessory to his wealthy wife's murder. But when Marlowe starts to investigate the crime, he uncovers far-reaching secrets.

Hugo

They'd Rather Be Right

By Mark Clifton and Frank Riley Joe Carter, a mutant telepath, helps two professors construct "Bossy," a cybernetic brain. When the artificial intelligence experiment elicits a hostile public reaction, the trio must go into hiding.

Newbery Medal

The Wheel on the School

By Meindert DeJong

A young girl in a small Dutch fishing village asks why storks, harbingers of good luck, no longer nest in her town. Soon, all of the children in her village--and, indeed, the entire community--are working together to bring back the birds.

OTHER NOTABLES

THE END OF ETERNITY | ISAAC ASIMOV

NOTES OF A NATIVE SON | JAMES BALDWIN

THE QUIET AMERICAN | GRAHAM GREENE

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY | PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW | C. S. LEWIS

THE DEER PARK | NORMAN MAILER

EROS AND CIVILIZATION | HERBERT MARCUSE

THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SOLDIER | GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

LOLITA | VLADIMIR NABOKOV

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND | FLANNERY O'CONNOR

LESS THAN ANGLES | BARBARA PYM

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING | J. R. R. TOLKIEN

THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW | C. VANN WOODWARD

NY TIMES BEST SELLERS

FICTION for the entire year of 1955

SINCERELY, WILLIS WAYDE | JOHN P. MARQUANT

BONJOUR TRISTESSE | FRANCOISE SAGAN

SOMETHING OF VALUE | ROBERT RUARK

AUNTIE MAME | PATRICK DENNIS

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR | HERMAN WOUK

Year in Review

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends U.S. advisers to South Vietnam ... Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the UK ... Richard J. Daley becomes mayor of Chicago ... Salk polio vaccine is declared safe for mass distribution ... West Germany joins NATO ... Eight Communist-bloc countries sign the Warsaw Pact ... Allen Ginsberg reads "Howl" in San Francisco ... Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp debuts ... Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California ... Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi ... Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama ... Argentina's President Juan Peron is ousted ... Actor James Dean dies in an automobile accident.