Fiction: Best of 1981: Books

A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone. Three spiritually adrift gringos and a collection of exotic supporting players bump into their fates on the fringes of a Central American revolution.

Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike. The third adventure of Rabbit Angstrom finds the ex-jock older, thicker around the middle, but still faithful to his love affair with the fading American dream.

The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. A dark age revolves around the solitary figure of a woman analyzed by Sigmund Freud and later killed by the Nazis at Babi Yar.

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Several millenniums after nuclear catastrophe,...