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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1979.

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Events

  • May – The Merchant Ivory Productions film The Europeans is released. Its screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala draws on the 1878 Henry James novel of the same name.
  • October 25 – The London Review of Books is first issued, its founding editors being Karl Miller, Mary-Kay Wilmers and Susannah Clapp. For its first six months it appears as an insert to The New York Review of Books.
  • November – Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.
  • unknown dates
  • K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he later calls steampunk.
  • August Wilson's Jitney is first produced; it becomes the eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle".

New books

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Fiction

  • Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • V. C. Andrews – Flowers in the Attic
  • Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
  • Barbara Taylor Bradford – A Woman of Substance
  • Octavia Butler – Kindred
  • Italo Calvino — If on a winter's night a traveler
  • Orson Scott Card – A Planet Called Treason
  • Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber
  • Eileen Chang – Lust, Caution
  • Agatha Christie – Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
  • L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Liberator
  • Michael Ende – The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
  • José Pablo Feinmann – Últimos días de la víctima
  • Alan Dean Foster – Alien (movie novelization)
  • Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini — A che punto è la notte
  • Brian Garfield – The Paladin
  • William Golding – Darkness Visible
  • William Goldman – Tinsel
  • Nadine Gordimer – Burger's Daughter
  • Arthur Hailey – Overload
  • Stratis Haviaras – When the Tree Sings
  • Douglas Hill – Galactic Warlord
  • Stephen King – The Dead Zone
  • Russell Kirk – The Princess of All Lands
  • Milan Kundera – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (first published in French as Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli)
  • John le Carré – Smiley's People
  • Morgan Llywelyn – Lion of Ireland: The Legend of Brian Boru
  • Robert Ludlum – The Matarese Circle
  • Norman Mailer – The Executioner's Song
  • Cormac McCarthy – Suttree
  • Roger McDonald – 1915: a novel
  • Haruki Murakami – Hear the Wind Sing (風の歌を聴け, Kaze no uta o kike)
  • Ellis Peters – One Corpse Too Many
  • Jerry Pournelle – Janissaries
  • Satyajit Ray – Hatyapuri
  • Harold Robbins – Memories of Another Day
  • Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer
  • Scott Spencer – Endless Love
  • Mary Stewart – The Last Enchantment
  • Peter Straub – Ghost Story
  • William Styron – Sophie's Choice
  • Trevanian – Shibumi
  • Kaari Utrio – Rautalilja
  • Jack Vance – The Face
  • Kurt Vonnegut – Jailbird
  • Elizabeth Walter – In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters
  • William Wharton – Birdy
  • Kit Williams – Masquerade
  • Raymond Williams – The Fight for Manod
  • Robert Anton Wilson – Schrodinger's Cat
  • Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff
  • Roger Zelazny – Roadmarks

Children and young people

  • Chris Van Allsburg – The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
  • Katharine Mary Briggs (with Anne Yvonne Gilbert) – Abbey Lubbers, Banshees, & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies
  • Raymond Briggs – Fungus the Bogeyman
  • Roald Dahl – The Twits
  • Colin Dann – The Animals of Farthing Wood
  • Peter Dickinson (with Wayne Anderson) – The Flight of Dragons
  • Gordon Korman &ndash; Go Jump in the Pool
  • Elizabeth Laird – Rosy's Garden
  • Robie Macauley – A Secret History of Time to Come
  • Robert Munsch – Mud Puddle
  • Bill Peet – Cowardly Clyde
  • Daniel Pinkwater
  • Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
  • Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario
  • Ellen Raskin – The Westing Game
  • Jane Severance (with Tea Schook) – When Megan Went Away
  • Barbara Sleigh – Carbonel and Calidor
  • Angela Sommer-Bodenburg – Der kleine Vampir
  • Rosemary Wells – Max & Ruby

Drama

  • Bahram Beyzai – Death of Yazdgerd (مرگ یزدگرد)
  • Caryl Churchill – Cloud Nine
  • David Fennario – Balconville
  • Richard Harris – Outside Edge
  • Elfriede Jelinek – Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte; oder Stützen der Gesellschaften (What Occurred after Nora Left her Husband, or Supports of Society)
  • Heiner Müller – Hamletmachine (first performance)
  • Mark Medoff – Children of a Lesser God
  • Neil Oram – The Warp
  • Peter Shaffer – Amadeus
  • Sam Shepard – Buried Child
  • Martin Sherman – Bent
  • Tom Stoppard – Undiscovered Country

Poetry

  • Kingsley Amis – Collected Poems

Non-fiction

  • Alison Adburgham – Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance
  • David Attenborough – Life on Earth
  • Harold Walter Bailey – Dictionary of Khotan Saka
  • Ion Biberi – Lumea de azi (World of Today)
  • Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
  • L. Sprague de Camp (editor) – The Blade of Conan
  • Joan Didion – The White Album
  • Elizabeth Eisenstein – The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
  • Peter Evans – The Music of Benjamin Britten
  • John Fowles – The Tree
  • Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
  • Eloise Greenfield, Lessie Jones Little, Pattie Ridley Jones &ndash; Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir
  • Douglas Hofstadter – Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  • Henry Kissinger – The White House Years
  • Leon Litwack – Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
  • Jean-François Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir)
  • Jessica Mitford – Poison Penmanship: the Gentle Art of Muckraking
  • Stephen Pile – The Book of Heroic Failures
  • Clark Ashton Smith – The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith
  • Margaret Trudeau – Beyond Reason
  • Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff

Births

  • February 4 – Ben Lerner, American poet, novelist and critic
  • February 10 – Johan Harstad, Norwegian novelist
  • February 27 - Alexander Gordon Smith, British children's and young-adult author
  • March 28 – Benjamin Percy, American short story writer
  • April 14 – Patrick Somerville, American novelist and short story writer
  • May 21 - James Clancy Phelan, American young-adult and thriller writer
  • June 28 – Florian Zeller, French novelist and dramatist
  • July 14 – Yukiko Motoya, Japanese fiction writer, playwright, theatre director and voice actress
  • August 14 - Sayaka Murata, Japanese novelist
  • unknown dates
  • D.D. Johnston, Scottish political novelist and university lecturer
  • Emily St. John Mandel, Canadian-born novelist

Deaths

  • January – Dilys Cadwaladr, Welsh-language poet (born 1902)
  • January 27 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine publisher, writer and critic (born 1890)
  • February 9 – Allen Tate, American poet and essayist (born 1899)
  • February 25 – John L. Wasserman, American entertainment critic (car accident, born 1938)
  • February 27 – Sir George Clark, English historian (born 1890)
  • March 26 – Jean Stafford, American short story writer and novelist (heart failure; born 1915)
  • April 8 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer (suicide, born 1952)
  • May 10 – J. B. Morton (Beachcomber), English humorous newspaper columnist (born 1893)
  • May 14 – Jean Rhys, Dominica-born English novelist (born 1890)
  • June 1 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer (born 1894)
  • June 3 – Arno Schmidt, German novelist (born 1914)
  • June 7 – Forrest Carter, American genre novelist (heart failure, born 1925)
  • July 6 – Malcolm Hulke, English television writer (born 1924)
  • July 7 – Ahmad Qandil, Saudi Arabian poet (born 1911)
  • July 15 – Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (born 1892)
  • July 21 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar (born 1899)
  • July 23 – Joseph Kessel, French journalist and novelist (born 1898)
  • July 24 - Edward Stachura, Polish writer (born 1937)
  • July 29 – Herbert Marcuse, German Jewish philosopher (born 1898)
  • August 8 – Nicholas Monsarrat, English novelist (born 1910)
  • August 16 – Jerzy Jurandot (Jerzy Glejgewicht), Polish poet and dramatist (born 1911)
  • August 20 – Christian Dotremont, Belgian painter and writer (born 1922)
  • August 22 – James T. Farrell, American novelist (born 1904)
  • September 5 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary (killed by guerillas; born 1921)
  • September 6 – Guy Bolton, British playwright (born 1884)
  • September 25 – Zhou Libo (周立波), Chinese novelist and translator (born 1908)
  • October 6 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet (born 1911)
  • October 17 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist (born 1904)
  • October 18 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer (born 1912)
  • December 12 – Goronwy Rees, Welsh journalist and academic (born 1909)
  • December 19 – Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (born 1902)

Awards

  • Nobel Prize for Literature: Odysseus Elytis

Canada

  • See 1979 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

  • Prix Goncourt: Antonine Maillet, Pélagie-la-Charrette
  • Prix Médicis:
  • French: Claude Durand, La Nuit zoologique
  • International: Alejo Carpentier, La harpe et l'ombre

Spain

  • Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Jorge Luis Borges and Gerardo Diego

United Kingdom

  • Booker Prize: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
  • Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Peter Dickinson, Tulku
  • Cholmondeley Award:
  • Guardian Fiction Prize: Neil Jordan, Night in Tunisia and Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize:
  • Fiction: William Golding, Darkness Visible
  • Biography: Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography

United States

  • American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction:
  • Nebula Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
  • Hugo Award:
  • Best Novel: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
  • Best Novella: John Varley, The Persistence of Vision
  • Locus Award for Best Novel: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
  • Bancroft Prize:
  • Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945
  • Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
  • Pulitzer Prize:
  • Drama: Sam Shepard, Buried Child
  • Biography or Autobiography: Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
  • Fiction: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
  • Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Now and Then: Poems 1976–1978
  • History: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics
  • General Nonfiction: E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature

Elsewhere

  • Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Yehudi Menuhin
  • Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, A Woman of the Future
  • Premio Nadal: Carlos Rojas, El ingenioso hidalgo y poeta Federico García Lorca asciende a los infiernos
  • Viareggio Prize: Giorgio Manganelli, Centuria

References

  • Popular Books of 1979 at Goodreads