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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1979.

Events

• May – Première of the Merchant Ivory Productions film The Europeans, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on Henry James' novel The Europeans (1878).


• 
  October 25 – The London Review of Books is first issued by its founding editors 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.^[1]
  


• 
  K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night pioneers full-length fiction in the genre he will later call steampunk.


• 
  August Wilson's Jitney is first produced; it will become the eighth of his "Pittsburgh Cycle".


• 
  Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.

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
  


• 
  William Golding – Darkness Visible
  


• 
  William Goldman – Tinsel
  


• 
  Nadine Gordimer – Burger's Daughter
  


• 
  Arthur Hailey – Overload
  


• 
  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
  


• 
  Roger McDonald – 1915: a novel
  


• 
  Ellis Peters – One Corpse Too Many
  


• 
  Daniel Pinkwater – Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario
  


• 
  Jerry Pournelle – Janissaries
  


• 
  Satyajit Ray – Hatyapuri
  


• 
  Harold Robbins – Memories of Another Day
  


• 
  Philip Roth – The Ghost Writer
  


• 
  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
  


• 
  Arthur Blythe (with Mark Hess) – Lenox Avenue Breakdown
  


• 
  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
  


• 
  Peter Dickinson (with Wayne Anderson) – The Flight of Dragons
  


• 
  Elizabeth Laird – Rosy's Garden
  


• 
  Robie Macauley (with Mark Hess) – A Secret History of Time to Come
  


• 
  Bill Peet – Cowardly Clyde
  


• 
  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
  

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 (What Occurred after Nora Left her Husband, or Supports of Society)


• 
  Mark Medoff – Children of a Lesser God
  


• 
  Peter Shaffer – Amadeus
  


• 
  Sam Shepard – Buried Child
  


• 
  Tom Stoppard – Undiscovered Country^[2]
  

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
  


• 
  Jerome Bruner – On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand
  


• 
  L. Sprague de Camp (editor) – The Blade of Conan
  


• 
  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^[3]
  


• 
  March 28 – Benjamin Percy, American short story writer


• 
  June 28 – Florian Zeller, French novelist and dramatist


• 
  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, West Indies-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 TV writer (born 1924)


• 
  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)


• 
  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:


• 
  Prix Médicis French:


• 
  Prix Médicis International:

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:


• 
  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 Non-Fiction: 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
  

References