1980 in literature

Events

June 5 – Opening of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, adapted from Charles Dickens' novel by David Edgar, at the Aldwych Theatre, London.

June 5 – Opening of Willy Russell's comedy Educating Rita with Julie Walters in the title rôle at the Donmar Warehouse in London in a Royal Shakespeare Company production.

August 25 – Pramoedya Ananta Toer's This Earth of Mankind (Bumi Manusia), the first of his tetralogy of historical novels, the Buru Quartet, is published in Indonesia following his release from ten years of political imprisonment; it is prohibited in the country the following year.

September – Performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Peter O'Toole in the lead opens at the Old Vic Theatre, London, often considered one of the greatest disasters in theatre history.

September 23 – Field Day Theatre Company presents its first production, the premiere of Brian Friel's Translations at the Guildhall, Derry in Northern Ireland.

November 27 – English playwright Harold Pinter marries biographer and novelist Lady Antonia Fraser following his divorce from the actress Vivien Merchant.

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (published 1979), reaches #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба, completed 1959) is first published, in Western Europe.

Marguerite Yourcenar becomes the first woman elected to the Académie française.

The National Library of Indonesia is created by merger.

Fiction

Douglas Adams – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Warren Adler – The War of the Roses

Woody Allen – Side Effects

V. C. Andrews – Petals on the Wind

Jean M. Auel – The Clan of the Cave Bear

Thomas Berger – Neighbors

Anthony Burgess – Earthly Powers

Ramsey Campbell, editor – New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

Bruce Chatwin – The Viceroy of Ouidah

Mary Higgins Clark – The Cradle Will Fall

J. M. Coetzee – Waiting for the Barbarians

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre -The Fifth Horseman

Pat Conroy – The Lords of Discipline

Basil Copper – Necropolis

L. Sprague de Camp

Conan and the Spider God

The Purple Pterodactyls

Mircea Diaconu – La noi, când vine iarna

E. L. Doctorow – Loon Lake

Allan W. Eckert – Song of the Wild

Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose (Il Nome della Rosa)

Shusaku Endo (遠藤 周作) – The Samurai (侍)

Ken Follett – The Key to Rebecca

Frederick Forsyth – The Devil's Alternative

Mary Jayne Gold – Crossroads Marseilles 1940

William Golding – Rites of Passage

Graham Greene – Dr. Fischer of Geneva

Douglas Hill

Day of the Starwind

Deathwing Over Veynaa

Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – The Treasure of Tranicos

P. D. James – Innocent Blood

Stephen King – Firestarter

Judith Krantz – Princess Daisy

Björn Kurtén – Dance of the Tiger

Manuel Mujica Láinez – El gran teatro

John le Carré – Smiley's People

Madeleine L'Engle – A Ring of Endless Light

Robert Ludlum – The Bourne Identity

James A. Michener – The Covenant

Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹) – Pinball, 1973 (1973 年のピンボール, Sen-Kyūhyaku-Nanajū-San-Nen no Pinbōru)

Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) – Coin Locker Babies (コインロッカー・ベイビーズ)

Cees Nooteboom – Rituals

Robert B. Parker – Looking for Rachel Wallace

Pepetela – Mayombe

Ellis Peters – Monk's Hood

Belva Plain – Random Winds

Paulette Poujol-Oriol – Le Creuset (The Crucible)

Marin Preda – Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni (The Most Beloved of Earthlings)

Herman Raucher – There Should Have Been Castles

Mordecai Richler – Joshua Then and Now

Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping

Salman Rushdie – Midnight's Children

Sidney Sheldon – Rage of Angels

Gay Talese – Thy Neighbor's Wife

Walter Tevis – Mockingbird

John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces

Gene Wolfe – The Shadow of the Torturer

Roger Zelazny

Changeling

The Last Defender of Camelot

Children and young people

Richard Adams

The Girl in a Swing

The Iron Wolf and Other Stories

Vivien Alcock – The Haunting of Cassie Palmer

Lynne Reid Banks – The Indian in the Cupboard

Jill Barklem – Brambly Hedge series:

Spring Story

Summer Story

Autumn Story

Winter Story

Ruskin Bond – The Cherry Tree

Matt Christopher – Wild Pitch

Roald Dahl – The Twits

Thomas M. Disch – The Brave Little Toaster

Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Spooks and Spectres

Thomas Meehan – Annie: An old-fashioned story

Robert Munsch – The Paper Bag Princess

Susan Musgrave

Gullband

Hag Head

Ruth Park – Playing Beatie Bow

Avril Rowlands – God's Wonderful Railway

Marjorie W. Sharmat – Gila Monsters Meet you at the Airport

Mary Stewart – A Walk in Wolf Wood

Hans-Joachim Gelberg (with Willi Glasauer etc.) – Eine Stadt geht über Land (The City meets the Country)

Drama

Howard Brenton – The Romans in Britain

David Edgar (adaptation) – The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Ronald Harwood – The Dresser

Ron Hutchinson – The Irish Play

Kenneth Ross – Breaker Morant

Willy Russell – Educating Rita

Sam Shepard – True West

Poetry

Valerio Magrelli – Ora serrata retinae

Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse

Non-fiction

Pierre Berton – The Invasion of Canada

Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark – Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book

David Bohm – Wholeness and the Implicate Order

L. Sprague de Camp – The Ragged Edge of Science

L. Sprague de Camp (as editor) – The Spell of Conan

Graham Chapman et al. – A Liar's Autobiography

Marilyn Ferguson – The Aquarian Conspiracy

Julien Gracq – Reading Writing

Graham Greene – Ways of Escape

Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time

Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman – No One Here Gets Out Alive

János Kornai – Economics of Shortage (Hiány)

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers – Grimoire of Armadel translation from French (posthumous)

Michael Medved and Harry Medved – The Golden Turkey Awards

Carl Sagan – Cosmos

Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On

Alvin Toffler – The Third Wave

Deaths

January 3

Joy Adamson, Silesian-born conservationist and writer living in Kenya (murdered, born 1910)

George Sutherland Fraser, Scottish poet and critic (born 1915)

January 11 – Barbara Pym, English novelist (cancer, born 1913)

February 25 – Caradog Prichard, Welsh poet and novelist in Welsh (born 1904)

March 12 – Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, Romanian poet, novelist and cartoonist (born 1881)

March 25 – James Wright, American poet (born 1927)

March 26 – Roland Barthes, French literary theorist (born 1915)

April 15 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, novelist and dramatist (born 1905)

April 24 – Alejo Carpentier, French Cuban novelist and writer (cancer, born 1904)

May 7 – Margaret Cole, English political writer, biographer and activist (born 1893)

May 16 – Marin Preda, Romanian novelist (asphyxiation, born 1922)

June 7 – Henry Miller, American novelist (born 1891)

July 1 – C. P. Snow, English novelist and scientist (born 1905)

July 6 – Mart Raud, Estonian poet, playwright and writer (born 1903)

July 9 – Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian poet and songwriter (born 1913)

July 26 – Kenneth Tynan, English-born theater critic (pulmonary emphysema, born 1927)

August 8 – David Mercer, English dramatist (born 1928)

August 10 – Gareth Evans, British philosopher (lung cancer (born 1946)

September 18 – Katherine Anne Porter, American novelist and essayist (born 1890)

November 9 – Patrick Campbell, Irish journalist and wit (born 1913)

December 2 – Romain Gary (Roman Kacew), French novelist (suicide, born 1914)

December 8 – John Lennon, English musician, songwriter and author (murdered, born 1940)

December 12 – Ben Travers, English playwright, screenwriter and novelist (born 1886)

December 27 – Todhunter Ballard, American genre novelist (born 1903)

December 31 – Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher (born 1911)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Czesław Miłosz

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Inaugural award to Archie Weller, The Day Of The Dog; the award is initially given to Paul Radley, who, in 1996, admits that his manuscript was actually written by his uncle.

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: David Campbell, Man in the Honeysuckle

Miles Franklin Award: Jessica Anderson, The Impersonators

Canada

See 1980 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Yves Navarre, Le Jardin d'acclimatation

Prix Médicis French: Jean-Luc Benoziglio, Cabinet-portrait who refused the prize, thus it was given to Jean Lahougue's Comptine des Height

Prix Médicis International: Andre Brink, Une saison blanche et sèche

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: William Golding, Rites of Passage

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Peter Dickinson, City of Gold

Cholmondeley Award: George Barker, Terence Tiller, Roy Fuller

Eric Gregory Award: Robert Minhinnick, Michael Hulse, Blake Morrison, Medbh McGuckian

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Robert B. Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart

Whitbread Best Book Award: David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?

United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Drama: Edward Albee

Caldecott Medal: Barbara Cooney, Ox-Cart Man

Dos Passos Prize: Graham Greene

Nebula Award: Gregory Benford, Timescape

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Joan Blos, A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Lanford Wilson, Talley's Folly

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Donald Justice, Selected Poems

Elsewhere

Hugo Award for Best Novel: Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise

Premio Cervantes : Juan Carlos Onetti

Premio Nadal: Juan Ramón Zaragoza, Concerto grosso