Trisha Shetty (Editor)

1985 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1985.

Contents

Events

  • February 25 – Sue Limb's parody of the Lake Poets, The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere, begins broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.
  • August 11 – A memorial to Hugh MacDiarmid is unveiled near his home at Langholm, Scotland.

    • Fiction

  • Isaac Asimov – Robots and Empire
  • Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid's Tale
  • Jean M. Auel – The Mammoth Hunters
  • Iain Banks – Walking on Glass
  • Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
  • Greg Bear
  • Blood Music
  • Eon
  • M. C. Beaton – Death of a Gossip
  • Thomas Bernhard – Old Masters: a comedy (Alte Meister: Komödie)
  • Anthony Burgess – The Kingdom of the Wicked
  • Orson Scott Card – Ender's Game
  • Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Honour
  • Don DeLillo – White Noise
  • Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Execution of Justice (Justiz)
  • Bret Easton Ellis – Less Than Zero
  • John Fowles – A Maggot
  • Carlos Fuentes – The Old Gringo (Gringo Viejo)
  • William Gaddis – Carpenter's Gothic
  • Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera)
  • Alasdair Gray – The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties
  • Graham Greene – The Tenth Man
  • Béla Hamvas (died 1968) – Karnevál (Carnival, written 1948–51)
  • Amy Hempel – Reasons to Live
  • Frank Herbert – Chapterhouse: Dune
  • Dương Thu Hương – Hành trình ngày thơ ấu (Journey in Childhood)
  • John Irving – The Cider House Rules
  • Tahar Ben Jelloun – The Sand Child (L'Enfant de sable)
  • Ernst Jünger – A Dangerous Encounter (Eine gefährliche Begegnung)
  • Garrison Keillor – Lake Wobegon Days
  • Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
  • László Krasznahorkai – Satantango
  • Doris Lessing – The Good Terrorist
  • H. P. Lovecraft
  • At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels
  • The Dunwich Horror and Others (corrected edition)
  • Richard A. Lupoff – Lovecraft's Book
  • Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
  • Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove
  • John D. MacDonald – The Lonely Silver Rain
  • Naguib Mahfouz – Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (العائش فى الحقيقة)
  • James A. Michener – Texas
  • Brian Moore – Black Robe
  • Bharati Mukherjee – Darkness (short stories)
  • Iris Murdoch – The Good Apprentice
  • Orhan Pamuk – The White Castle (Beyaz Kale)
  • Ellis Peters – An Excellent Mystery
  • Caryl Phillips – The Final Passage
  • Peter Pohl – Johnny, My Friend (Janne, min vän)
  • Guy Rewenig – Hannert dem Atlantik (first novel in the Luxembourgish language)
  • Carl Sagan – Contact
  • Sidney Sheldon – If Tomorrow Comes
  • Antonio Tabucchi – Little Misunderstandings of No Importance
  • Sue Townsend – Rebuilding Coventry
  • Anne Tyler – The Accidental Tourist
  • Andrew Vachss – Flood
  • Kurt Vonnegut – Galápagos
  • Jeanette Winterson – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
  • Roger Zelazny – Trumps of Doom

    • Children and young people

  • Chester Aaron – Out of Sight, Out of Mind
  • Pamela Allen – A Lion in the Night
  • Chris Van Allsburg – The Polar Express
  • Frank Asch – I Can Blink
  • Robert Cormier – Beyond the Chocolate War
  • Roald Dahl – The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
  • Virginia Hamilton (with Leo and Diane Dillon) – The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales
  • Patricia MacLachlan – Sarah, Plain and Tall
  • Laura Numeroff – If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
  • Pat O'Shea – The Hounds of the Morrigan
  • Cynthia Rylant – A Blue-Eyed Daisy
  • Jacqueline Wilson – How to Survive Summer Camp (novel)
  • Elizabeth Winthrop – The Castle in the Attic
  • Bill Peet – The Kweeks of Kookatumdee

    • Drama

  • Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière (adapted) – Mahabharata
  • Christopher Hampton (adapted) – Les Liaisons Dangereuses
  • David Hare and Howard Brenton – Pravda
  • Wallace Shawn – Aunt Dan and Lemon
  • Sam Shepard – A Lie of the Mind
  • Neil Simon – Biloxi Blues
  • August Wilson – Fences

    • Poetry

  • Carol Ann Duffy – Standing Female Nude

    • Non-fiction

  • Svetlana Alexievich – U voyny — ne zhenskoye litso (War’s Unwomanly Face)
  • Roger Caron – Bingo! The Horrifying Eyewitness Account of a Prison Riot
  • Allen Carr – The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
  • Michael Denton – Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
  • Elaine Dundy – Elvis and Gladys
  • Julien Gracq – The Shape of a City
  • Ernest Hemingway – The Dangerous Summer
  • David Lowenthal – The Past Is a Foreign Country
  • Walter A. McDougall – ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
  • Tim O'Brien – The Nuclear Age
  • Priscilla Beaulieu Presley – Elvis and Me
  • David Robinson – Chaplin: His Life and Art
  • Oliver Sacks – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
  • Roger Scruton – Thinkers of the New Left
  • Gary Soto – Living Up the Street

    • Births

  • April 24 – Alexander Zeldin, British playwright and director
  • September 24 – Eleanor Catton, New Zealand novelist
  • September 30 – Téa Obreht, Yugoslav-born American novelist writing in English

    • Deaths

  • January 5 – Alexis Rannit, Estonian-born American poet and critic (born 1914)
  • February 6 – James Hadley Chase, English thriller novelist (born 1906)
  • February 19 – Carl Joachim Hambro, Norwegian novelist, essayist and philologist (born 1914)
  • March 15 – Radha Krishna Choudhary, Indian historian and philosopher (born 1921)
  • April 4 – Kate Roberts, Welsh writer (born 1891)
  • April 7 – Carl Schmitt, German political theorist (born 1888)
  • April 17 – Basil Bunting, English poet (born 1900)
  • April 25 – Uku Masing, Estonian religious philosopher, linguist and writer (born 1909)
  • May 12 – Josephine Miles, American poet and literary critic (born 1911)
  • May 18 – Hedley Bull, Australian economist (cancer, born 1932)
  • May 25 – Robert Nathan, American novelist and poet (born 1894)
  • June 16 – Ernst Orvil, Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright (born 1898)
  • July 16 – Heinrich Böll, German novelist, Nobel laureate (born 1917)
  • July 29 – Judah Waten, Australian novelist (born 1911)
  • August 14 – Alfred Hayes, English-born American novelist, poet and screenwriter (born 1911)
  • August 30 – (Janet) Taylor Caldwell, English-born American novelist (born 1900)
  • September 22 – D. J. Opperman, South African Afrikaans poet (born 1914)
  • October 1 – E. B. White, American children's writer and writer on style (born 1899)
  • October 24 – László Bíró, Hungarian journalist and inventor (born 1899)
  • October 31 – Nikos Engonopoulos, Greek poet (born 1903)
  • November 3 – J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, English historian (born 1916)
  • November 4 – Hilda Vaughan, Welsh novelist and short story writer (born 1892)
  • November 11 – James Hanley, English-born novelist and dramatist of Irish extraction (born 1897)
  • November 16 – Gulshan Nanda, Indian novelist and screenwriter (born 1929)
  • November 25
  • Geoffrey Grigson, English poet and critic (born 1905)
  • Elsa Morante, Italian novelist (born 1912)
  • December 2 – Philip Larkin, English poet (born 1922)
  • December 7 – Robert Graves, English novelist, poet and critic (born 1895)

    • Awards

  • Nobel Prize for Literature: Claude Simon

    • Australia

  • The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: no award given out this year
  • C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Kevin Hart, Your Shadow; Rosemary Dobson, The Three Fates
  • Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, Kevin Hart, Your Shadow
  • Mary Gilmore Prize: Doris Brett, The Truth about Unicorns
  • Miles Franklin Award: Christopher Koch, The Doubleman

    • Canada

  • See 1985 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

    • France

  • Prix Goncourt: Yann Queffélec, Les Noces barbares
  • Prix Médicis French: Michel Braudeau, Naissance d'une passion
  • Prix Médicis International: Joseph Heller, God Knows

    • Spain

  • Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

    • United Kingdom

  • Booker Prize: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
  • Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Kevin Crossley-Holland, Storm
  • Cholmondeley Award: Dannie Abse, Peter Redgrove, Brian Taylor
  • Eric Gregory Award: Graham Mort, Adam Thorpe, Pippa Little, James Harpur, Simon North, Julian May
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Robert Edric, Winter Garden
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: David Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed
  • Newdigate prize: Robert Twigger
  • Whitbread Best Book Award: Douglas Dunn, Elegies

    • United States

  • Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Liz Rosenberg, The Fire Music
  • American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, Robert Penn Warren
  • Frost Medal: Robert Penn Warren
  • Nebula Award: Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
  • Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown
  • Pulitzer Prize for Drama: James Lapine for book; Stephen Sondheim for music and lyrics, Sunday in the Park With George
  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Alison Lurie – Foreign Affairs
  • Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Carolyn Kizer: Yin
  • Whiting Awards (inaugural year):
    • Fiction: Raymond Abbott, Stuart Dybek, Wright Morris (fiction/nonfiction), Howard Norman, James Robison, Austin Wright (fiction/nonfiction)Poetry: Douglas Crase, Jorie Graham, Linda Gregg, James Schuyler

    Elsewhere

  • Premio Nadal: Pau Faner Coll – Flor de sal

    • References

    1985 in literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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