Colombia Author Wins Times’ Fiction Award

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera,” about a man who has waited more than 50 years to redeclare his passion for a beautiful woman widowed at last, has won the fiction award in the ninth annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize competition.

Translated from Spanish, the novel by Nobel Prize-winning Garcia Marquez was one of five books named Thursday in New York City at a private reception for publishers of the nominated works.

Also selected by an anonymous panel as the best of the year were:

In poetry, Richard Wilbur’s “New and Collected Poems,” published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; in history, Eric Foner’s “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,” published by Harper & Row, and in biography, Brenda Maddox’s “Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom,” published by Houghton Mifflin.

In current interest, the winner was William Greider’s “Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country,” published by Simon & Schuster.

Winning authors, chosen from 25 finalists, each will receive $1,000, a citation and a leather-bound copy of the winning book during a ceremony at The Times on Nov. 4.

Collection of Wilbur’s Works

Six early volumes of poetry, 27 new poems and a cantata have been collected in American Poet Laureate Wilbur’s prize-winning book. Foner’s work is a study of the turbulent years immediately following the Civil War.

Maddox’s book explores the life of Nora Barnacle, the inspiration for the character of Molly Bloom in “Ulysses,” written by her husband, James Joyce. Journalist Greider’s book explains what led to last October’s stock market crash and studies the history and workings of the Federal Reserve.

The Times also selects annually a winner of the Robert Kirsch Award, named for the late critic, for a body of work by a writer living or writing in the American West. The winner of this year’s award will not be announced until the Nov. 4 presentation.

Books were selected from those published between Aug. 1, 1987, and July 31, 1988.