The Hours

The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 film of the same name. Plot introduction The book concerns three generations of women affected by the classic novel Mrs. Dalloway. In 1923 Richmond, outside London, author Virginia Woolf is writing Mrs. Dalloway and struggling with her mental illness. In 1949 Los Angeles, Laura Brown is reading Mrs. Dalloway while planning a birthday party for her husband, a World War II veteran. In 1999 New York City, Clarissa Vaughan plans a party to celebrate a major literary award received by her good friend and former lover, the poet Richard, who is dying of an AIDS-related illness.