1988 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE NOMINEES : <i> For the publishing year August 1, 1987, Through July 31, 1988</i>

FICTION SHOWDOWN by Jorge Amado ; translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (Bantam Books)

The Brazilian writer’s 22nd novel chronicles the founding of the Bahian frontier city of Tocaia Grande and the lives of some of its colorful inhabitants.

LIBRA by Don DeLillo (Viking)

DeLillo’s novel works as an imagined biography of the elusive Lee Harvey Oswald and the events in his life that led up to President Kennedy’s assassination.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ; translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Alfred A. Knopf)

For 50 years, nine months and four days Florentino Ariza has waited to declare his passion, again, for the beautiful and (at last) widowed Fermina Daza in this Caribbean novel that explores love in its many guises.

THE FIFTH CHILD by Doris Lessing (Alfred A. Knopf)

A harrowing tale of a happy couple with four children whose lives are completely disrupted by the arrival of a fifth child--a boy who, in his strength, demands, and appearance, is not quite human.

MOON TIGER by Penelope Lively (Grove Press)

A dying woman’s memories of her romances and unusual life collide with actual historic events that she recounts while the people in her life file past her bedside.

POETRY SELECTED POEMS, 1938-1988 by Thomas McGrath, edited and with an introduction by Sam Hamill (Copper Canyon Press)

Selected poems from three previous volumes and 30 new poems by a poet described by the late critic Terrence Des Pres as “closest to Whitman as anyone since Whitman himself. . . .”

AMERICAN ODALISQUE by Jane Miller (Copper Canyon Press)

A third volume by a young poet who captures her subjects in the delicacy and tenderness of the true lyric: “Could we, / without perishing, without hurting / anyone, be innocent again?”

THE IMPERFECT PARADISE by Linda Pastan (W. W. Norton)

An elegant selection by a poet at home in accessible, terse language: “On a branch / somewhere in eternity / a bird sits. . . .”

NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, 1940-1986 by Karl Shapiro (University of Chicago Press)

A sampling of the work of a poet who has taught at Johns Hopkins and UC Davis, and who is past editor of Poetry and Prairie Schooner.

NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS by Richard Wilbur (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)

Six early volumes of poetry, 27 new poems and a cantata are collected in this volume by the current Poet Laureate of the United States.

HISTORY RECONSTRUCTION America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner (Harper & Row)

Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University, captures the drama and explores the historical significance of the turbulent years immediately following the Civil War.

HEROES OF THEIR OWN LIVES The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 by Linda Gordon (Viking)

A history of family violence in America from the point of view of its hapless victims, based on the case records of social-work agencies that were created in the second half of the 19th Century.

THE AGE OF EMPIRE, 1875-1914 by Eric Hobsbawm (Pantheon Books)

The story of how late-19th-Century civilization, dominated by the Western bourgeoisie, gave way to the modern era of unprecedented wars, mass labor movements and emerging middle classes rejecting liberalism.

THE ISSEI The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 by Yuji Ichioka (The Free Press/Macmillan)

Yuji Ichioka tells the story of the first generation of Japanese immigrants to the United States, who encountered brutal forms of discrimination, culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924 that “assumed the racial inferiority and undesirability of Asians.”

NUCLEAR FEAR A History of Images by Spencer R. Weart (Harvard University Press)

Spencer R. Weart sets out to prove that much of what is generally believed about nuclear energy is based not on facts but “a complex tangle of imagery suffused with emotions,” symbols that can be traced back throughout history.

BIOGRAPHY FREUD A Life for Our Times by Peter Gay (W. W. Norton)

Peter Gay analyzes the world, career and relationships, personal as well as professional, of Sigmund Freud.

REBECCA WEST This Is What Matters by Victoria Glendinning (Alfred A. Knopf)

Veteran biographer Victoria Glendinning vividly re-creates the life and times of one of England’s greatest 20th-Century literary talents.

RODIN A Biography by Frederic V. Grunfeld (Henry Holt)

In the first full-scale biography of Auguste Rodin in more than 50 years, Frederic V. Grunfeld portrays the man considered one of the world’s greatest sculptors as a progressive, a sensualist and a friend to some of the key artistic figures of 19th-Century Europe.

NORA The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox (Houghton Mifflin)

The life of Nora Barnacle, better known as the wife of James Joyce, his “portable Ireland,” a woman fixed in the imaginations of readers the world over as Molly Bloom.

TIMEBENDS A Life by Arthur Miller (Grove Press)

The famed playwright tells the story of his life--how he came to his vocation as writer, his victory before the House Un-American Activities Committee, marriage to Marilyn Monroe and current popularity in China.

CURRENT INTEREST CHAOS Making a New Science by James Gleick (Viking)

James Gleick tells the story of the physicists, biologists and astronomers who have developed a new science called “chaos,” a revolutionary way of seeing pattern and order in the natural world where only the erratic, the random was observed before.

SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider (Simon & Schuster)

Journalist William Greider explains what led up to the Oct. 19, 1987, stock market crash in an expose and history of the mysterious Federal Reserve.

THE YELLOW WIND by David Grossman ; translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

An Israeli novelist, commissioned by a news magazine to spend three months on the West Bank of the Jordan River to write a piece on the 20th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of those territories, reports on the misery of the Palestinians and the cost of occupation for both occupied and occupier.

RACHEL AND HER CHILDREN Homeless Families in America by Jonathon Kozol (Crown Publishers)

The author of the National Book Award-winning “Death at an Early Age” looks at the plight of the more than 2 million homeless in this country. Who are they, and why will even more people--especially women and children--find themselves out on the streets?

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (St. Martin’s Press)

San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts relates the story of AIDS, how it entered the country and spread because the federal government put budget before the nation’s welfare. He also reports on the heroic individuals in science, politics and the gay community who tried to warn the nation of the immensity of the epidemic.