1999 in literature

Events

May 1 – Andrew Motion is appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for ten years.

June 19 – Stephen King is hit by a van while taking a walk. He is hospitalized for three weeks and only resumes writing his next book, On Writing, in July.

Persephone Books founded in Bloomsbury, London, by Nicola Beauman to reprint mid-20th century fiction and non-fiction mainly by women.

Fiction

Isabel Allende – Daughter of Fortune (Hija de la fortuna)

Aaron Allston

Solo Command

Starfighters of Adumar

Laurie Halse Anderson – Speak

Max Barry – Syrup

Greg Bear – Darwin's Radio

Raymond Benson

High Time to Kill

The World Is Not Enough

Maeve Binchy – Tara Road

François Bloemhof – Klipgooi

Ben Bova – Return to Mars

Thomas Brussig – Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee

Terry Brooks – Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

Stephen Chbosky – The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Tracy Chevalier – Girl with a Pearl Earring

J. M. Coetzee – Disgrace

Matt Cohen – Elizabeth and After

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Fortress

Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC

Douglas Coupland – Miss Wyoming

Robert Crais – L.A. Requiem

Michael Crichton – Timeline

August Derleth (editor) – New Horizons

Marc Dugain – La Chambre des Officiers (The Officers' Ward)

Frederic S. Durbin – Dragonfly

Bret Easton Ellis – Glamorama

Sebastian Faulks – Charlotte Gray

Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Amanda Filipacchi – Vapor

Anna Gavalda – Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part

John Grisham – The Testament

Ha Jin (哈金) – Waiting

Joanne Harris – Chocolat

Thomas Harris – Hannibal

Ernest Hemingway – True at First Light

Carl Hiaasen – Sick Puppy

Stewart Home – Cunt

Michel Houellebecq – Atomised

Nancy Huston – The Mark of the Angel

Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye – Soul Harvest

K. W. Jeter – Hard Merchandise

Stephen King:

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Hearts in Atlantis

László Krasznahorkai – War and War

Jhumpa Lahiri – Interpreter of Maladies (short stories)

Joe R. Lansdale

Veil's Visit: a Taste of Hap and Leonard

Freezer Burn

John le Carré – Single & Single

Jonathan Lethem – Motherless Brooklyn

Ray Loriga – Tokio ya no nos quiere

Frank McCourt -'Tis

David Macfarlane – Summer Gone

Alistair MacLeod – No Great Mischief

Juliet Marillier – Daughter of the Forest

Jeffrey Moore – Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain

Erwin Mortier – Marcel

Chuck Palahniuk

Invisible Monsters

Survivor

Tony Parsons – Man and Boy

Terry Pratchett – The Fifth Elephant

Kathy Reichs – Death du Jour

Matthew Reilly – Temple

Jennifer Roberson – Lady of Sherwood

Louis Sachar – Holes

R. A. Salvatore – Vector Prime

Margit Sandemo – Skattejakten

Neal Shusterman – Downsiders

Michael Slade – Burnt Bones

Susan Sontag – In America

Michael Stackpole – Isard's Revenge

Matthew Stadler – Allan Stein

Danielle Steel – Irresistible Forces

Neal Stephenson – Cryptonomicon

Remy Sylado – Ca Bau Kan (The Courtesan)

Koushun Takami (高見 広春) – Battle Royale

Rose Tremain – Music and Silence

Miloš Urban – Sedmikostelí (The Seven Churches)

Andrew Vachss – Choice of Evil

Jane Vandenburgh – 'The Physics of Sunset

Vernor Vinge – A Deepness in the Sky

Jeanette Winterson – The World and Other Places

Timothy Zahn – The Icarus Hunt

Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold – Lord Demon

Children and young people

Elizabeth Arnold – Spin of the Sunwheel

Susan Cooper – King of Shadows

Julia Donaldson (with Axel Scheffler) – The Gruffalo

Mem Fox - Sleepy Bears

Adeline Yen Mah – Chinese Cinderella (autobiography)

John Nickle – The Ant Bully

Iona Opie - Here Comes Mother Goose

Louise Rennison – Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Lemony Snicket – The Reptile Room

Jacqueline Wilson – The Illustrated Mum

Drama

Jon Fosse – Dream of Autumn

Julia Jordan – St Paul

David Mamet – Boston Marriage

Frank McGuinness – Dolly West's Kitchen

August Wilson – King Hedley II

Poetry

Iona Opie - Here Comes Mother Goose

Dejan Stojanović – Sunce sebe gleda (The Sun Watches Itself)

Non-fiction

David Cairns – Berlioz: Volume 2, Servitude and Greatness 1832–1869

Wayson Choy – Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood

The Dalai Lama – Ancient Wisdom, Modern World

Samuel R. Delany – Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Freeman Dyson – The Sun, the Genome and the Internet

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke – Paracelsus: Essential Readings.

Brian Greene – The Elegant Universe

Deborah Harkness – John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature

Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster – The Century

S.T. Joshi – Sixty Years of Arkham House

Winona LaDuke – All our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

W. G. Sebald – Luftkrieg und Literatur ("Air War and Literature", translated as On the Natural History of Destruction)

David Southwell – Conspiracy Theories

Dejan Stojanović – Razgovori ("Conversations")

Deaths

January 11 – Naomi Mitchison, Scottish novelist and poet (born 1897)

January 16 – Dadie Rylands (George Rylands), English Shakespearean scholar (born 1902)

February 8 – Iris Murdoch, Irish-born novelist and philosopher (born 1919)

February 20 – Sarah Kane, English playwright (suicide, born 1971)

February 22 – William Bronk, American poet (born 1918)

February 24 – Andre Dubus, American short story writer, essayist and autobiographer (born 1936)

March 4 – Karel van het Reve, Dutch writer (born 1921)

March 5 – John Figueroa, Jamaican poet (born 1920)

March 8 – Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine author (born 1914)

March 13 – Garson Kanin, American playwright and screenwriter (born 1912)

March 28 – Jim Turner, American editor (born 1945)

April 13 – Knut Hauge, Norwegian novelist, dramatist and children's writer (born 1911)

May 8 – Soeman Hs, Indonesian novelist (born 1904)

May 10 – Shel Silverstein, American children's poet (born 1930)

June 14 – J. F. Powers, American writer (born 1917)

July 2 – Mario Puzo, American writer (born 1920)

September 22 – Marion Zimmer Bradley, American writer (born 1930)

October 3 – Heinz G. Konsalik, German novelist (born 1921)

October 19

Nathalie Sarraute, Russian-born French writer and lawyer (born 1900)

Penelope Mortimer, Welsh-born English novelist and biographer (born 1918)

November 11 – Jacobo Timerman, Soviet-born Argentinian journalist and publisher (born 1923)

November 18 – Paul Bowles, American novelist (born 1910)

December 2 – Matt Cohen, Canadian novelist (born 1942)

December 8 – Rupert Hart-Davis, English editor and publisher (born 1907)

December 12 – Joseph Heller, American novelist (born 1923)

Unknown date – E. J. Scovell, English poet (born 1907)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Günter Grass

Camões Prize: Sophia de Mello Breyner

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Hsu-Ming Teo, Love and Vertigo

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Gig Ryan, Pure and Applied

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Lee Cataldi, Race Against Time

Miles Franklin Award: Murray Bail, Eucalyptus

Canada

Giller Prize for Canadian Fiction: Bonnie Burnard, A Good House

See 1999 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Michael Poole, Romancing Mary Jane

France

Prix Femina: Maryline Desbiolles, Anchise

Prix Goncourt: Jean Echenoz, Je m'en vais

Prix Décembre: Claude Askolovitch, Voyage au bout de la France: Le Front National tel qu'il est

Prix Médicis French: Michel Del Castillo, Colette, une certaine France

Prix Médicis Non-Fiction: Christian Oster, Mon grand appartement

Prix Médicis International: Bjorn Larsson, Le capitaine et les rêves

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Timothy Mo, Renegade, or Halo2

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Kathryn Hughes, George Eliot: The Last Victorian

Cholmondeley Award: Vicki Feaver, Geoffrey Hill, Elma Mitchell, Sheenagh Pugh

Eric Gregory Award: Ross Cogan, Matthew Hollis, Helen Ivory, Andrew Pidoux, Owen Sheers, Dan Wyke

Orange Prize for Fiction: Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood

Samuel Johnson Prize (first award): Antony Beevor, Stalingrad

Whitbread Best Book Award: Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Daisy Fried, She Didn't Mean To Do It

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: George Garrett

Arthur Rense Prize awarded to James McMichael by the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: J.D. McClatchy, "Tattoos"

Compton Crook Award: James Stoddard, The High House

Frost Medal: Barbara Guest

Hugo Award for Best Novel: Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

National Book Award for Fiction: to Waiting by Ha Jin

National Book Critics Circle Award: to Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Nebula Award: Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Louis Sachar, Holes

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Margaret Edson, Wit

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mark Strand, Blizzard of One

Wallace Stevens Award: Jackson Mac Low

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Ehud Havazelet, Ben Marcus, Yxta Maya Murray, ZZ PackerNonfiction: Gordon Grice, Margaret TalbotPlays: Naomi IizukaPoetry: Michael Haskell, Terrance Hayes, Martha Zweig

Elsewhere

Finlandia Prize: 1999 Kristina Carlson, Maan ääreen

Premio Nadal: Gustavo Martín Zarzo, Las historias de Marta y Fernando

Viareggio Prize: Ernesto Franco, Vite senza fine

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain