1993 in literature

Events

September 24 – Former president and writer Zviad Gamsakhurdia returns to Georgia to establish a government in exile in the city of Zugdidi.

November 17 – Annie Proulx wins the National Book Award for her novel The Shipping News.

Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen's novel Crane's Morning is published in India; it proves to have been plagiarized from Elizabeth Goudge's The Rosemary Tree (1956), and the author will commit suicide in 1994.

Professor Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time becomes the longest-running book on the The Sunday Times bestseller list.

Reality television contest Million's Poet (Arabic: شاعر المليون) is launched in the United Arab Emirates.

Fiction

Stephen Ambrose – Band of Brothers

Jeffrey Archer – Honour Among Thieves

David Banks – Iceberg

Iain Banks – Complicity

Pat Barker – The Eye in the Door

Greg Bear – Moving Mars

Daniel Blythe – The Dimension Riders

William Boyd – The Blue Afternoon

Sandra Boynton – Barnyard Dance!

Christopher Bulis – Shadowmind

Anthony Burgess – A Dead Man in Deptford

Ramsey Campbell – Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991

Tom Clancy – Without Remorse

Deborah Joy Corey – Losing Eddie

Bernard Cornwell – Rebel

Robert Crais – Free Fall

Maurice G. Dantec – La Sirène rouge

Peter Darvill-Evans – Deceit

Hollace Davids and Paul Davids – Mission from Mount Yoda

Lindsey Davis – Poseidon's Gold

L. Sprague de Camp – Rivers of Time

Stephen R. Donaldson – The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises

Roddy Doyle – Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Shusaku Endo (遠藤 周作) – Deep River (深い河)

Laura Esquivel – Like Water for Chocolate

Jeffrey Eugenides – The Virgin Suicides

Richard Paul Evans – The Christmas Box

Sebastian Faulks – Birdsong

Amanda Filipacchi – Nude Men

John Gardner – Never Send Flowers

Ernest Gaines – A Lesson Before Dying

William Gibson – Virtual Light

John Grisham – The Client

'Hal' (a Macintosh IIcx computer) and Scott French (programmer) – Just This Once

Jesse Lee Kercheval – The Museum of Happiness

Stephen King – Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nancy Kress – The Aliens of Earth

John le Carré – The Night Manager

Lois Lowry – The Giver

Robert Ludlum – The Scorpio Illusion

Amin Maalouf – Le Rocher de Tanios

David A. McIntee – White Darkness

Andy McNab – Bravo Two Zero

Gita Mehta – A River Sutra (short stories)

Jim Mortimore

Blood Heat

(with Andy Lane) – Lucifer Rising

Taslima Nasrin – Lajja

Patrick O'Brian – Clarissa Oakes

Kate Orman – The Left-Handed Hummingbird

Neil Penswick – The Pit

Terry Pratchett – Men at Arms

E. Annie Proulx – The Shipping News

Jean Raspail – Sept cavaliers

Anne Rice – Lasher

Gareth Roberts – The Highest Science

J. Jill Robinson – Lovely In Her Bones

Nigel Robinson – Birthright

W. G. Sebald – The Emigrants

Will Self – My Idea of Fun

Vikram Seth – A Suitable Boy

Ahdaf Soueif – In the Eye of the Sun

Danielle Steel – Vanished

'Emil Tode' (Tõnu Õnnepalu) – Piiririik (Border State)

Sue Townsend – Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years

Scott Turow – Pleading Guilty

Kathy Tyers – The Truce at Bakura

Buket Uzuner – The Sound of Fishsteps (Balık İzlerinin Sesi)

Andrew Vachss – Shella

Mario Vargas Llosa – Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes)

Ivan Vladislavic – The Folly

Robert James Waller – Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend

Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting

Herman Wouk – The Hope

Austin Wright – Tony and Susan

Timothy Zahn – The Last Command

Roger Zelazny – A Night in the Lonesome October

Children and young people

Janet and Allan Ahlberg – It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Chris Van Allsburg - The Sweetest Fig

Malorie Blackman – Operation Gadgetman!

Susan Cooper – The Boggart

Mem Fox - Time for Bed

Jim Murphy - Across America on an Emigrant Train

Rodman Philbrick – Freak the Mighty

Allen Say – Grandfather's Journey

Marjorie W. Sharmat – Nate the Great and the Pillowcase

Francisco Calvo Serraller (with Willi Glasauer) – Grandes Maestros de la Pintura|The Greatest Masters of Art and its Paintings

Theresa Tomlinson – The Forestwife (first in the Forestwife trilogy)

Drama

April De Angelis – Playhouse Creatures

David Hare – The Absence of War

Tom Stoppard – Arcadia

Poetry

Leonard Cohen – Stranger Music

Paul Durcan – A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems

Dejan Stojanović – Krugovanje: 1978–1987 ("Circling: 1978–1987")

Non-fiction

Martin Amis – Visiting Mrs Nabokov: And Other Excursions

Malcolm Bradbury – The Modern British Novel

Richard Dawkins – Viruses of the Mind

Shobha De and Khushwant Singh – Uncertain Liaisons

Zlata Filipović – Zlata's Diary

Bob Flowerdew – The Organic Gardener

Tamala Krishna Goswami – Aditi commentary Happiness is a Science – Aditi's Vow

Linda Holmen, Mary Santella-Johnson, Bill Watterson – Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes

Linda Johns – Sharing a Robin's Life 

Scott McCloud – Understanding Comics

Miranda Seymour – Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale

Howard Stern – Private Parts

Walter Stewart – Too Big to Fail

Margaret Thatcher - The Downing Street Years

Gordon S. Wood – The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Deaths

January 6 – Ștefan Baciu, Romanian and Brazilian poet, novelist and literary promoter (born 1918)

January 18 – Eleanor Hibbert (Jean Plaidy, etc.), English historical novelist (born 1906)

January 22 – Kōbō Abe (安部 公房), Japanese novelist and playwright (born 1924)

February 5 – William Pène du Bois, American author and illustrator (born 1916)

March 9 – C. Northcote Parkinson, English naval historian and critic of business methods (born 1909)

April 15

Leslie Charteris, Anglo-American thriller writer (born 1907)

Robert Westall, English novelist and children's writer (born 1929)

April 23 – Bertus Aafjes, Dutch poet (born 1914)

June 19 – Sir William Golding, English novelist and poet (born 1911)

July 10 – Ruth Krauss, American children's author and poet (born 1901)

August 28 – E. P. Thompson, English political historian (born 1924)

September 7 – Eugen Barbu, Romanian novelist, playwright and journalist (born 1924)

September 16 – Oodgeroo Noonuccal, aboriginal Australian poet (born 1920)

November 1 – Maeve Brennan, Irish short story writer and journalist (born 1917)

November 22 – Anthony Burgess, English novelist (born 1917)

December 4 – Margaret Landon, American historical novelist (born 1903)

December 28 – William L. Shirer, historian (born 1904)

December 31 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgian dissident, scientist and writer (possible suicide, born 1913)

Undated – Parijat (Bishnu Kumari Waiba), Nepalese novelist and poet (born 1937)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Toni Morrison

Camões Prize: Rachel de Queiroz

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Helen Demidenko, The Hand That Signed The Paper

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Les Murray, Translations from the Natural World

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Les Murray, Translations from the Natural World

Mary Gilmore Prize: Jill Jones, The Mask and Jagged Star

Miles Franklin Award: Alex Miller, The Ancestor Game

Canada

See 1993 Governor General's Awards for a complete lLiza Potvin wins the 1993

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Liza Potvin (co-winner), White Lies (for my mother) 

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Elizabeth Hay (co-winner), The Only Snow in Havana 

France

Prix Goncourt: Amin Maalouf, Le Rocher de Tanios

Prix Décembre: René de Obaldia. Exobiographie

Prix Médicis French: Emmanuèle Bernheim, Sa femme

Prix Médicis International: Paul Auster, Leviathan

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Swindells, Stone Cold

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Richard Holmes, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage

Cholmondeley Award: Patricia Beer, George Mackay Brown, P. J. Kavanagh, Michael Longley

Whitbread Book Award: Joan Brady, Theory of War

The Sunday Express Book of the Year: William Boyd, The Blue Afternoon

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Natasha Saj, Red Under the Skin

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: George Starbuck

American Academy of Arts and Letters gold Medal for Belles Lettres, Elizabeth Hardwick

Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Stephen Yenser, "Blue Guide"

Compton Crook Award: Holly Lisle, Fire in the Mist

Frost Medal: William Stafford

National Book Award for Fiction: E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

National Book Critics Circle Award: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began

Nebula Award: Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Cynthia Rylant, Missing May

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: E. Annie Proulx, Postcards

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Jeffrey Eugenides, Dagoberto Gilb, Sigrid Nunez, Janet Peery, Lisa SheaPlays: Kevin KlingPoetry: Mark Levine, Nathaniel Mackey (poetry/fiction), Dionisio D. Martinez, Kathleen Peirce

Writers Guild of America Awards 1993 (March 13): Best Adapted Screenplay: Steven Zaillian, Schindler's List

Elsewhere

Premio Nadal: Rafael Argullol Murgadas, La razón del mal