1981 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1981.

Events

May 31 – The burning of Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka is begun by a mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitaries. They destroy over 97,000 volumes in one of the worst examples of ethnic book burning in the modern era.[1]
August – Sefer ve Sefel opens as an English used bookstore in Jerusalem.
unknown dates
- John Gardner successfully revives the James Bond novel series originated by Ian Fleming with Licence Renewed (not counting a faux biography of Bond and a pair of film novelizations, the first original Bond novel since 1968's Colonel Sun). The revived Bond book series will run uninterrupted until 2002.
- Colin MacCabe is denied tenure at the University of Cambridge, apparently because of a dispute within the English Faculty about the teaching of structuralism.[2]
- The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is given for the first time.[3]

New books

Poetry

L. Sprague de Camp – Heroes and Hobgoblins
Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – Rang-o-Noor (The Colour and the Light)
Norman Nicholson – Sea to the West
Sylvia Plath (posthumous) – Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes
Kathleen Raine – Collected Poems, 1935–1980
Richard L. Tierney – Collected Poems

Non-fiction

Maya Angelou – The Heart of a Woman
Colin Robert Chase – The Dating of Beowulf
Mary Chesnut – Mary Chesnut's Civil War
Hugo Brandt Corstius – Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde
Daniel Dennett – Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
Nancy Dorian – Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect
Timothy Findley – Famous Last Words
Stephen Jay Gould – The Mismeasure of Man
Dumas Malone – The Sage of Monticello
V. S. Naipaul – Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
Giovanni Pettinato – The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay
Anne Scott-James – The Cottage Garden
Ian Smith – The Great Betrayal
Viktor Suvorov – The Liberators
Xu Zhongyu – University Chinese (大学语文)

Births

July 10 – Karen Russell, American novelist
September 30 – Cecelia Ahern, Irish novelist
October 3 – Leïla Slimani, Franco-Moroccan novelist[4]
October 12 – NoViolet Bulawayo (Elizabeth Zandile Tshele), Zimbabwe-born novelist[5]
December 13 – Mathis Bailey, American-Canadian novelist and fiction writer
unknown dates
- Amy Sackville, English novelist[6]
- Sunjeev Sahota, English novelist[7]
- Saud Alsanousi, Kuwaiti novelist

Deaths

January 9 – A. J. Cronin, Scottish novelist (born 1896)
February 17 – David Garnett, English novelist (born 1892)
February 23 – Nan Shepherd, Scottish novelist and poet (born 1893)
March 7 – Bosley Crowther, American film critic (born 1905)
March 20 – Pedro García Cabrera, Spanish poet (born 1905)
March 29 – Clive Sansom, English-born Tasmanian poet and playwright (born 1910)
April 23 – Josep Pla, Catalan Spanish journalist and writer (born 1897)
April 26 – Robert Garioch, Scottish poet (born 1909)
May 8 – Uri Zvi Grinberg, Israeli poet writing in Hebrew and Yiddish (born 1896)
May 9 – Nelson Algren, American novelist (born 1909)
May 18 – William Saroyan, American novelist and dramatist (born 1908)
May 30 – Gwendolyn B. Bennett, African American writer and artist (born 1902)
June 15 – Philip Toynbee, English novelist and journalist (born 1916)
September 3 – Alec Waugh, English novelist (born 1898)
September 12 – Eugenio Montale, Italian poet (born 1896)
December 26 – Amber Reeves, New Zealand-born English scholar, feminist and novelist (born 1887)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Elias Canetti

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Chris Matthews, Al Jazzar; Tim Winton, An Open Swimmer
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Alan Gould, Astral Sea
Miles Franklin Award: Peter Carey, Bliss

Canada

See 1981 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Lucien Bodard, Anne Marie
Prix Médicis French: François-Olivier Rousseau, L'Enfant d'Édouard
Prix Médicis International: David Shahar, Le Jour de la comtesse

Spain

Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Octavio Paz

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Westall, The Scarecrows
Cholmondeley Award: Roy Fisher, Robert Garioch, Charles Boyle
Eric Gregory Award: Alan Jenkins, Simon Rae, Marion Lomax, Philip Gross, Kathleen Jamie, Mark Abley, Roger Crowley, Ian Gregson
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, and Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: D. J. Enright
Whitbread Best Book Award: William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Kathy Calloway, Heart of the Garfish
American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Malcolm Cowley
Dos Passos Prize: Gilbert Sorrentino
Nebula Award: Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
Newbery Medal for children's literature: Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved
Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Schuyler: The Morning of the Poem

Elsewhere

Hugo Award for Best Novel: The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
Premio Nadal: Carmen Gómez Ojea, Cantiga de aguero

References

Tassie Seneviratne (June 1, 2014). "Burning Of The Jaffna Public Library: Whodunit?". Colombo Telegraph. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
Newsweek, 16 February 1981, p. 95; see also Philip Lewis, "The Post-Structuralist Condition", Diacritics 12:1 (1982): 2–24, p. 2.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1979). Reports of the President and the Treasurer - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Schwartzbrod, Alexandra (29 September 2014). "Leïla Slimani. "Madame Bovary X"". Liberation (in French). Retrieved 3 April 2018.
"NoViolet Bulawayo [real name Elizabeth Zandile Tshele] (1981 -)". Zimbabwe Monitor. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
"The Still Point by Amy Sackville". Orange Prize for Fiction. 2010. Retrieved 27 November 2010.
"Sunjeev Sahota". Picador. Retrieved 30 December 2020.

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[1] Tassie Seneviratne (June 1, 2014). "Burning Of The Jaffna Public Library: Whodunit?". Colombo Telegraph. Retrieved December 30, 2020.

[2] Newsweek, 16 February 1981, p. 95; see also Philip Lewis, "The Post-Structuralist Condition", Diacritics 12:1 (1982): 2–24, p. 2.

[3] John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1979). Reports of the President and the Treasurer - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

[4] Schwartzbrod, Alexandra (29 September 2014). "Leïla Slimani. "Madame Bovary X"". Liberation (in French). Retrieved 3 April 2018.

[5] "NoViolet Bulawayo [real name Elizabeth Zandile Tshele] (1981 -)". Zimbabwe Monitor. Retrieved 27 January 2021.

[6] "The Still Point by Amy Sackville". Orange Prize for Fiction. 2010. Retrieved 27 November 2010.

[7] "Sunjeev Sahota". Picador. Retrieved 30 December 2020.