The Hours is a 1998

1998 in literature

The year 1998 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 5 - Tennessee Williams' 1938 play, Not About Nightingales, receives its stage première....

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham is an American writer, best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.-Early life and education:...

. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...

, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US $5000. The foundation brings the winner and runners-up to...

, and was later made into an Oscar

Academy Awards

An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

-winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

, Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep

Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...

 and Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....

.
The book concerns three generations of women affected by a Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

 novel.

The first is Woolf herself writing Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 and struggling with her own mental illness

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

. The second is Mrs. Brown, wife of a World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 veteran

War Veteran

War Veteran is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick. It was first published in If magazine in March 1955.-Plot summary:The plot concerns an old man who claims to have travelled back in time from a future in which Earth has lost a devastating war to its own Martian and Venusian colonies...

, who is reading Mrs.