1999 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNERS

JUDITH THURMAN

SECRETS OF THE FLESH

Life of Colette

Alfred A. Knopf: 600 pp., $30

In the middle of the last century, the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye was a rustic backwater despite its proximity to Paris, three hours by train to the nearest station followed by a rough cart ride. The Puisaye was called “the poor Burgundy” to distinguish it from the rich Burgundy of the great vineyards. The landscape was dotted with ponds which bred malaria and smelled of caltrops and marsh mint. Coppice grew thickly in the ravines, where the wild strawberries and lilies of the valley were guarded by pitiless brambles. Game abounded in the woods. There were ancient stands of pine, which Colette loved for their scent. The spongy paths she followed when she gathered wild mushrooms or hunted for butterflies with her brothers were carpeted with violet heather. It was a secretive, inbred region of casual morals, hard winters, poaching, and poor farms. Wet-nursing was, as late as the fin de siecle, a lucrative sideline for the farmers’ wives.

Judith Thurman, winner for biography, is the author of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,” which won the National Book Award in 1983.

MITCHELL DUNEIER

SIDEWALK

With Photographs by Ovie Carter and an Afterword by Hakim Hasan

Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 384 pp., $27

It is not hard to understand why Hakim Hasan came to see himself as a public character. Early one July morning, a deliveryman pulled his truck up to the curb behind Hakim’s vending table on Greenwich Avenue off the corner of Sixth Avenue and carried a large box of flowers over to him.

“Can you hold these until the flower shop opens up?” the deliveryman asked. “No problem,” responded Hakim as he continued to set up the books on his table. “Put them right under there.” When the store opened for business, he brought them inside and gave them to the owner. “Why did that man trust you with the flowers?” I later asked. “People like me are the eyes and ears of this street,” he explained, echoing Jane Jacobs again. “Yes, I could take those flowers and sell them for a few hundred dollars. But that deliveryman sees me here every day. I’m as dependable as any store-owner.”

Mitchell Duneier, winner for current interest, is the author of “Slim’s Table,” which received the Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Assn. in 1994. He is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UC Santa Barbara.

JOHN W. DOWER

EMBRACING DEFEAT

Japan in the Wake of World War II

W. W. Norton: 678 pp., $29.95

It was August 15, 1945, shortly before noon. What followed would never be forgotten.

Aihara Yu was twenty-eight-years-old then, a farmer’s wife in rural Shizuoka prefecture. Through the decades to come, the day would replay itself in her memory like an old filmstrip, a staccato newsreel in black and white.

She was working outdoors when a messenger arrived breathless from the village. It had been announced that the emperor would be making a personal broadcast at noon, he exclaimed before rushing off. Everyone was to come and listen.

The news that America, the land of the enemy, had disappeared into the sea would hardly have been more startling. The emperor was to speak! In the two decades since he had ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, Emperor Hirohito had never once spoken directly to all his subjects. Until now the sovereign’s words had been handed down in the form of imperial rescripts -- as printed texts, pronouncements humbly read by others.

John W. Dower, winner for history, is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

AMIT CHAUDHURI

FREEDOM SONG

Three Novels

Alfred A. Knopf: 440 pp., $24

He saw the lane. Small houses, unlovely and unremarkable, stood face to face with each other. Chhotomama’s house had a pomelo tree in its tiny courtyard and madhavi creepers by its windows. A boy stood clinging to the rusting iron gate, while another boy pushed it backward and forward. As he did so, the first boy traveled in a small arc through space. When the taxi topped in front of the house, they stared at it with great dignity for a few moments, then ran off in terror, leaving the gate swinging mildly and illegally. A window opened above (it was so silent for a second that Sandeep could hear someone unlocking it) and Babla’s face appeared behind the mullions.

Amit Chaudhuri, winner for fiction, lives in Calcutta.

ELIZABETH STROUT

AMY AND ISABELLE

A Novel

Random House: 308 pp., $22.95

It was terribly hot that summer Mr. Robertson left town, and for a long while the river seemed dead. Just a dead brown snake of a thing lying flat through the center of town, dirty yellow foam collecting at its edge. Strangers driving by on the turnpike rolled up their windows at the gagging, sulfurous smell and wondered how anyone could live with that kind of stench coming from the river and the mill. But the people who lived in Shirley Falls were used to it, and even in the awful heat it was only noticeable when you first woke up; no, they didn’t particularly mind the smell.

Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, teaches literature and writing at Manhattan Community College.

ROBERT CORMIER

FRENCHTOWN SUMMER

Delacorte Press: 116 pp., $16.95

That summer in Frenchtown in the days when I knew my name but did not know who I was, we lived on the second floor of the three-decker on Fourth Street. From the piazza late in the afternoon I watched for my father, waiting for him to come home from the Monument Comb Shop. No matter how tired he was, his step was quick. He’d always look up, expecting to see me, and that’s why I was there, not wanting to disappoint him or myself.

Robert Cormier, winner for young adult fiction, is the author of “The Chocolate War,” “I Am the Cheese,” “After the First Death” and, most recently, “Heroes.”

DAVA SOBEL

GALILEO’S DAUGHTER

A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

Walker & Company: 420 pp., $27

Most Illustrious Lord Father

We are terribly saddened by the death of your cherished sister, our dear aunt; but our sorrow at losing her is as nothing compared to our concern for your sake, because your suffering will be all the greater, Sire, as truly you have no one else left in your world, now that she, who could not have been more precious to you, has departed, and therefore we can only imagine how you sustain the severity of such a sudden and completely unexpected blow. And while I tell you that we share deeply in your grief, you would do well to draw even greater comfort from contemplating the general state of human misery, since we are all of us here on Earth like strangers and wayfarers, who soon will be bound for our true homeland in Heaven, where there is perfect happiness, and where we must hope that your sister’s blessed soul has already gone. Thus, for the love of God, we pray you, Sire, to be consoled and to put yourself in His hands, for, as you know so well, that is what He wants of you; to do otherwise would be to injure yourself and hurt us, too, because we lament grievously when we hear that you are burdened and troubled, as we have no other source of goodness in this world but you.

Dava Sobel, winner for science and technology, is the author of “Longitude.”

C.K. WILLIAMS

REPAIR

Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 70 pp., $21

That astonishing thing that happens when you crack a needle-awl into a block of ice: the way a perfect section through it crazes into gleaming fault-lines, fractures, facets; dazzling silvery deltas that in one too-quick-to-capture instant madly complicate the cosmos of its innards. Radiant now with spines and spikes, aggressive barbs of glittering light, a treasure hoard of light, when you stab it again it comes apart in nearly equal segments, both faces grainy, gnawed at, dull.

C.K. Williams, winner for poetry, is the author of numerous books. “Repair” recently was awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize.