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
- José Pablo Feinmann – Últimos días de la víctima
- Thomas Flanagan — Year of the French
- Alan Dean Foster – Alien
- 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
- 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
- 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 – 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 – The Flight of Dragons
- Gordon Korman - 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 – 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
- 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
- Heiner Müller – Hamletmachine
- 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
- Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
- L. Sprague de Camp – 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
- 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
- January 27 – Victoria Ocampo, Argentine publisher, writer and critic
- February 9 – Allen Tate, American poet and essayist
- February 25 – John L. Wasserman, American entertainment critic
- February 27 – Sir George Clark, English historian
- March 26 – Jean Stafford, American short story writer and novelist
- April 8 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer
- May 10 – J. B. Morton, English humorous newspaper columnist
- May 14 – Jean Rhys, Dominica-born English novelist
- June 1 – Eric Partridge, New Zealand/British lexicographer
- June 3 – Arno Schmidt, German novelist
- June 7 – Forrest Carter, American genre novelist
- July 6 – Malcolm Hulke, English television writer
- July 7 – Ahmad Qandil, Saudi Arabian poet
- July 15 – Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet
- July 21 – Eugène Vinaver, Russian-born English literary scholar
- July 23 – Joseph Kessel, French journalist and novelist
- July 24 - Edward Stachura, Polish writer
- July 29 – Herbert Marcuse, German Jewish philosopher
- August 8 – Nicholas Monsarrat, English novelist
- August 16 – Jerzy Jurandot, Polish poet and dramatist
- August 20 – Christian Dotremont, Belgian painter and writer
- August 22 – James T. Farrell, American novelist
- September 5 – John Bradburne, English poet and missionary
- September 6 – Guy Bolton, British playwright
- September 25 – Zhou Libo, Chinese novelist and translator
- October 6 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet
- October 17 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist
- October 18 – Virgilio Piñera, Cuban poet and short-story writer
- December 12 – Goronwy Rees, Welsh journalist and academic
- December 19 – Donald Creighton, Canadian historian
Awards
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
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
- 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''