Living Canon

PEN/Hemingway Award 1988: Complete list of winners

The 1988 PEN/Hemingway Award recognized one of those rare debut novels that announces a major literary talent to the world: Lawrence Thornton’s Imagining Argentina. Established to honor the most promising debut fiction of the year, the PEN/Hemingway Award has long served as a crucial launching pad for writers who demonstrate the kind of artistic ambition and craft that Hemingway himself embodied. Thornton’s sweeping novel, set against the backdrop of Argentina’s “Dirty War,” immediately established him as a writer capable of handling weighty historical material with both narrative sophistication and profound emotional intelligence.

Imagining Argentina tells the story of a newspaper editor who discovers he possesses an extraordinary ability—he can imagine the lives of people who have disappeared, channeling their experiences through his art. It’s a novel that works simultaneously as political allegory, magical realist fiction, and meditation on the power of imagination itself to bear witness to atrocity. The PEN/Hemingway Award judges recognized in Thornton a writer committed to the kind of serious literary exploration that goes beyond mere storytelling, a writer willing to take formal risks in service of moral truth.

For those interested in following the trajectory of major literary debut prizes, the 1988 PEN/Hemingway Award winner remains a testament to how this particular award has consistently identified voices that would shape American letters in the decades to come.

Debut Novel