1989 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1989.

Events

• February 14 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran (died 3 June 1989), issues a fatwa calling for the death of Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie and his publishers for issuing the novel The Satanic Verses (1988). On February 24 Iran places a US $3 million bounty on Rushdie's head.^[1] On August 3, 1989, a bomb kills Mustafa Mazeh in London as he attempts to plant it in a hotel, in order to carry out the fatwa.^[2]
• March 1 – The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 comes into effect in the United States, making the country a party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886.
• April 23 – Leading figures of the theatre mark William Shakespeare's birthday with a street party to oppose the destruction of the recently-discovered archaeological remains of the English Renaissance Rose Theatre and Globe theatres in London.^[3]
• October – The National Library of Norway is established, with a new building at Mo i Rana.^[4]
• December 29 – Playwright Václav Havel becomes President of Czechoslovakia.

New books

Fiction

• Hanan al-Shaykh – Women of Sand and Myrrh (Misk al–ghazal)
• Martin Amis – London Fields
• Piers Anthony – Total Recall
• Iain Banks – Canal Dreams
• John Banville – The Book of Evidence
• Clive Barker – The Great and Secret Show
• Julian Barnes – A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
• Thomas Berger – Changing the Past
• Larry Bond – Red Phoenix
• Larry Brown – Dirty Work
• Anthony Burgess – Any Old Iron
• Nick Cave – And the Ass Saw the Angel
• Tom Clancy – Clear and Present Danger
• Mary Higgins Clark – While My Pretty One Sleeps
• Hugh Cook – The Wicked and the Witless
• Bernard Cornwell
  • Sharpe's Revenge
  • Sea Lord (aka Killer's Wake)
• Bryce Courtenay – The Power of One
• Robert Crais – Stalking the Angel
• Lindsey Davis – The Silver Pigs
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • The Honorable Barbarian
  • (with Fletcher Pratt) – The Complete Compleat Enchanter
• E. L. Doctorow – Billy Bathgate
• Katherine Dunn – Geek Love
• Umberto Eco – Foucault's Pendulum
• George Alec Effinger – A Fire in the Sun
• Mircea Eliade (died 1986) – Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent (Romanul adolescentului miop) (written 1921–1925)
• Ben Elton – Stark
• Steve Erickson – Tours of the Black Clock
• Laura Esquivel – Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate)
• Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth
• Frederick Forsyth – The Negotiator
• Jon Fosse – Naustet (Boathouse)
• Gabriel García Márquez – The General in His Labyrinth (El general en su laberinto)
• John Gardner
  • Licence to Kill
  • Win, Lose or Die
• Charles Gill – The Boozer Challenge
• John Grisham – A Time to Kill
• A. M. Homes – Jack
• Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – The Conan Chronicles
• John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
• Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
• Fleur Jaeggy – it:I beati anni del castigo (Sweet Days of Discipline)
• Randall Kenan – A Visitation of Spirits
• Elias Khoury – رحلة غاندي الصغير (Rihlat Ghandi al-saghir, The Journey of Little Gandhi)
• Stephen King – The Dark Half
• László Krasznahorkai – The Melancholy of Resistance (Az ellenállás melankóliája)
• Joe R. Lansdale
  • Cold in July
  • By Bizarre Hands
• John le Carré – The Russia House
• H. P. Lovecraft – The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (corrected edition)
• Hilary Mantel – Fludd
• Javier Marías – Todas las almas (All Souls)
• James A. Michener – Six Days in Havana
• Hanna Mina – The End of a Brave Man (Nihayat Rajul Shujaa)
• Bharati Mukherjee – Jasmine
• Larry Niven – The Legacy of Heorot
• Joyce Carol Oates – American Appetites
• Robert B. Parker – Playmates
• Ellis Peters
  • The Heretic's Apprentice
  • The Potter's Field
• Giuseppe Pontiggia – La grande sera
• Terry Pratchett
  • Guards! Guards!
  • Pyramids
• Paul Quarrington – Whale Music
• Mordecai Richler – Solomon Gursky Was Here
• Giampaolo Rugarli – Il nido di ghiaccio
• José Saramago – The History of the Siege of Lisbon
• Sidney Sheldon – The Sands of Time
• Dan Simmons – Hyperion
• John Skipp and Craig Spector – Book of the Dead
• Danielle Steel
  • Daddy
  • Star
• Bruce Sterling – Crystal Express
• Alexander Stuart – The War Zone
• Amy Tan – The Joy Luck Club
• Shashi Tharoor – The Great Indian Novel
• Rose Tremain – Restoration
• Jane Vandenburgh – Failure to Zig-Zag
• Andrew Vachss – Hard Candy
• Alice Walker – The Temple of My Familiar
• Robert McLiam Wilson – Ripley Bogle
• Roger Zelazny
  • Frost & Fire (short stories and essays)
  • Knight of Shadows
• Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

Children and young people

• Verna Aardema – Rabbit Makes a Monkey of Lion
• Joyce Barkhouse – Pit Pony
• Bruce Coville – My Teacher Is an Alien
• Anne Fine
  • Bill's New Frock
  • Goggle-Eyes
• Mark Helprin (with Chris Van Allsburg) – Swan Lake
• Yoshi Kogo – Big Al
• Norman Maclean (with Barry Moser) – A River Runs Through It
• Bill Martin Jr. (with Lois Ehlert) – Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• David McKee – Elmer
• Jim Murphy – The Call Of The Wolves
• Bill Peet – Bill Peet: An Autobiography
• Robert D. San Souci – The Talking Eggs: A Folktale from the American South
• Jon Scieszka (with Lane Smith) – The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!
• R. L. Stine – The New Girl (first in the Fear Street series of 55 books)
• Christopher Tolkien (with J. R. R. Tolkien and Alan Lee) – The Treason of Isengard
• Hélène Desputeaux – Caillou
• Michael Rosen – We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Drama

• Herman Brusselmans and Tom Lanoye – De Canadese muur (The Canadian Wall)
• Jim Cartwright – Two
• Nick Darke – Kissing the Pope (original title: Campesinos)
• Michael Wall – Amongst Barbarians
• Keith Waterhouse – Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Poetry

Main article: 1989 in poetry

• Simon Armitage – Zoom!
• Paul Fleischman – Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
• David Lehman – The Best American Poetry 1989

Non-fiction

• Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg – Angst und Vorurteil
• Bill Bryson – The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
• Rodney Cotterill – No Ghost in the Machine: Modern Science and the Brain, the Mind, and the Soul
• Stephen R. Covey – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
• Bruno Dagens – Angkor: Heart of an Asian Empire
• William Dalrymple – In Xanadu: A Quest
• Cynthia Enloe – Bananas, Beaches and Bases
• Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon – Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony
• Rüdiger Imhof – John Banville: A Critical Introduction, the first full-length appraisal of the work of major turn of the century writer John Banville.^[5][6]
• Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell
• Pauline Kael – Hooked
• Bob Kane and Tom Andrae – Batman and Me
• John Keegan – The Face of Battle
• Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson – And Their Children After Them
• Peter Mayle – A Year in Provence
• Claudia Moatti – The Search for Ancient Rome
• Ann Moir and David Jessel – Brain Sex
• New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
• Michael Palin – Around the World in 80 Days
• Harold Perkin – The Rise of Professional Society. England Since 1880
• Gilda Radner – It's Always Something
• Peter Sloterdijk – Infinite Mobilization (Eurotaoismus)
• Dan Topolski and Patrick Robinson – True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny
• V. Vale and Andrea Juno – Modern Primitives
• Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett – The Andy Warhol Diaries
• Jeremy Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence
• Bob Wood – Big Ten Country

Births

• August 26 - Sara Raasch, American young-adult fiction writer

Deaths

• January 4 – Srikrishna Alanahalli, Indian novelist and poet (born 1947)
• January 8 – Bruce Chatwin, English travel writer and novelist (born 1940)
• February 3 – John Cassavetes, American actor, director and writer (born 1929)
• February 12 – Thomas Bernhard, Austrian author (born 1931)
• February 21 – Denys Corley Smith, English author and journalist (born 1922)
• March 14 – Edward Abbey, American essayist (born 1927)
• March 27 – Malcolm Cowley, American novelist and poet (born 1898)
• April 14 – Laurence Meynell (Valerie Baxter, A. Stephen Tring), English novelist and children's writer (born 1899)
• April 19 – Daphne du Maurier, English novelist (born 1907)
• May 19 – C. L. R. James, Trinidad-born American journalist (born 1901)
• May 20 – Erzsébet Galgóczi, Hungarian novelist, playwright and screenwriter (born 1930)
• July 31 – Zhou Yang, Chinese literary theorist (born 1908)
• August 23 – R. D. Laing, Scottish psychologist and author (born 1927)
• August 26 – Irving Stone, American novelist (born 1903)
• September 4
  • Georges Simenon, Belgian novelist and crime writer (born 1903)
  • Sir Ronald Syme, New Zealand classicist (born 1903)
• September 13 – Acharya Aatreya, Telugu screenwriter (born 1921)
• September 15 – Robert Penn Warren, American poet and novelist (born 1905)
• September 30
  • Horace Alexander, English current-affairs writer and ornithologist (born 1909)
  • Oskar Davičo, Serbian novelist and poet (born 1909)
• October 13 – Cesare Zavattini, Italian screenwriter (born 1902)
• November 22 – José Guadalupe Cruz, Mexican comics writer (born 1917)
• December 5 – George Selden (Terry Andrews), American children's author (gastrointestinal bleeding, born 1929)^[7]
• December 19 – Stella Gibbons, English novelist (born 1902)
• December 22 – Samuel Beckett, Irish-born playwright, novelist and poet (born 1906)
• December 26 – Paul Jennings, English humorist (born 1918)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Camilo José Cela
• Europe Theatre Prize: Peter Brook
• Camões Prize (first award): Miguel Torga

Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Mandy Sayer, Mood Indigo
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Gwen Harwood, Bone Scan
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: John Tranter, Under Berlin
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Alex Skovron, The Re-arrangement
• Miles Franklin Award: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

Canada

• See 1989 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Jean Vautrin, Un grand Pas vers le Bon Dieu
• Prix Décembre: Guy Dupré, Les Manœuvres d'automne
• Prix Médicis French: Serge Doubrovsky, Le Livre brisé
• Prix Médicis International: Alvaro Mutis, La Neige de l'amiral

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Anne Fine, Goggle-Eyes
• Cholmondeley Award: Peter Didsbury, Douglas Dunn, E. J. Scovell
• Eric Gregory Award: Gerard Woodward, David Morley, Katrina Porteous, Paul Henry
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: James Kelman, A Disaffection
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life
• Newdigate prize: Jane Griffiths
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Allen Curnow
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions
• The Sunday Express Book of the Year: Rose Tremain, Restoration

United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Nancy Vieira Couto, The Face in the Water
• Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Anthony Hecht
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Jorie Graham, "Spring"
• Compton Crook Award: Elizabeth Moon, Sheepfarmer's Daughter
• Frost Medal: Gwendolyn Brooks
• National Book Critics Circle Award: to The Broken Cord by Michael Dorris
• National Book Award for Fiction: to Spartina by John Casey
• Nebula Award: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, The Healer's War
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Paul Fleischman, Joyful Noise
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Anne Tyler – Breathing Lessons^[8]
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Wilbur: New and Collected Poems
• Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Ellen Akins, Marianne Wiggins

Nonfiction: Ian Frazier, Natalie Kusz, Lucy Sante, Tobias Wolff (nonfiction/fiction)

Plays: Timberlake Wertenbaker

Poetry: Russell Edson, Mary Karr, C.D. Wright

Japan

• Falcon Award (Maltese Falcon Society of Japan): Andrew Vachss for Strega
• The Japan Fantasy Novel Award is established, with Ken'ichi Sakemi winning with his novel Kōkyū Shōsetsu.

References

1. Appignanesi, Lisa (February 1, 1990). The Rushdie File. Syracuse University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-8156-0248-4.
2. Thomas, Tobi (August 12, 2022). "Salman Rushdie: timeline of the novelist's career". The Guardian. London. p. 5. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
3. The Rose Theatre Trust. Accessed 15 July 2014
4. IFLA Office for International Lending (1991). Interlending and Document Supply: Proceedings of the Second International Conference Held in London, November 1990. IFLA Office for International Lending. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-7123-2089-4.
5. Dukes, Gerry (1991). "Reviewed Work: John Banville: A Critical Study by Joseph McMinn". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. Vol. 80, no. 319. pp. 309–311. JSTOR 30091627.
6. Kenny, John (July 24, 1999). "Reintroducing Banville" (PDF). The Irish Times. p. 8. Weekend.
7. "George Selden, 60, Writer of Tales Describing a Cricket's Adventures". The New York Times. December 6, 1989. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
8. Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Clarage, Elizabeth C. (1999). Who's who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 245. ISBN 978-1-57356-111-2. Retrieved January 10, 2021.