# 1979 in literature

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

## 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
### 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
* Thomas Flanagan — Year of the French
* 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
* 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 – 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
* 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 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
* Prix Médicis 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 for fiction: William Golding, Darkness Visible
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 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: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
* Locus Award for Best Novel: Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake
* Newbery Medal for children's literature:
* Bancroft Prize: Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941–1945
* Bancroft Prize: Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of An American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution
* Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Sam Shepard, Buried Child
* Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
* Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Penn Warren, Now and Then: Poems 1976–1978
* Pulitzer Prize for History: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics
* Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature

### Elsewhere

* 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