Bel Canto

Alright - time to get serious!  Bel Canto won all sorts of awards, including the Orange Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  The PEN/Faulkner Award is given to the year's best fiction by living American citizens.  Ann Patchett won the award in 2002.

I think the most interesting thing about this book is that it's actually based on true events.  From Wikipedia:

The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996 in Lima, Peru, when 14 members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of Japan's ambassador to Peru, Morihisa Aoki, in celebration of Emperor Akihito's 63rd birthday. Most of the hostages were soon released. After being held hostage for 126 days, the remaining dignitaries were freed on 22 April 1997, in a raid by Peruvian Armed Forces commandos, during which one hostage, two commandos, and all the MRTA militants died.

In the book, the South American country is unspecified, the party was held at the vice president's house in honor of a Japanese businessman, and the crisis lasted about the same amount of time.  It seems so unbelievable that someone could be a hostage in fairly civil circumstances for that amount of time, but I guess it happens!  Patchett does a great job describing the microcosmos of the terrorists and the hostages.  She gives all the characters an emotional past, present, and future that fits perfectly well within the setting of the story.  I have no idea what the details of the actual real-life terrorist crisis were, but Patchett's version rings so tragically true.  I haven't read any other PEN/Faulkner Award winners, so I don't know if this book meets expectations, but it was certainly a good read...twice!