1981 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1981.

Events

May 31 – The burning of Jaffna 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.
August – Sefer ve Sefel opens as an English used bookstore in Jerusalem.

Uncertain 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 due to his position in a dispute within the English Faculty about the teaching of structuralism.[1]
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is given for the first time.

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 C. 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
December 10 – NoViolet Bulawayo (Elizabeth Zandile Tshele), Zimbabwe-born novelist
December 13 – Mathis Bailey, American-Canadian novelist and fiction writer

Uncertain dates

Amy Sackville, English novelist
Sunjeev Sahota, English 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

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

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