1981 in literature

Events

• May 31 – The burning of Jaffna library in Sri Lanka is begun by a mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitaries. They destroy over 97,000 volumes in one of the worst examples of ethnic book burning in the modern era.
• August – Sefer ve Sefel opens as an English used bookstore in Jerusalem.

• John Gardner successfully revives the James Bond novel series originated by Ian Fleming with Licence Renewed. The revived Bond book series will run uninterrupted until 2002.
• Colin MacCabe is denied tenure at the University of Cambridge, apparently due to his position in a dispute within the English Faculty about the teaching of structuralism.
• The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is given for the first time.

  New books

Fiction

• Kingsley Amis – The Golden Age of Science Fiction
• Martin Amis – Other People
• V. C. Andrews – If There Be Thorns
• Louis Auchincloss – The Cat and the King
• René Barjavel – Une rose au paradis
• Samuel Beckett – Ill Seen Ill Said
• Thomas Berger – Reinhart's Women
• Pierre Berton – Flames Across the Border
• Simon Bond – 101 Uses for a Dead Cat
• William Boyd – A Good Man in Africa
• Pascal Bruckner – Evil Angels
• William S. Burroughs – Cities of the Red Night
• Robert Olen Butler – The Alleys of Eden
• Peter Carey – Bliss
• Raymond Carver – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
• David Case – The Third Grave
• James Clavell – Noble House
• Bernard Cornwell
• *Sharpe's Eagle
• *Sharpe's Gold
• John Crowley – Little, Big
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Hand of Zei
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – Footprints on Sand
• Régine Deforges – La Bicyclette bleue
• Samuel R. Delany – Distant Star
• Michel Déon – Where Are You Dying Tonight?
• Cynthia Freeman – No Time for Tears
• Gabriel García Márquez – Chronicle of a Death Foretold
• John Gardner – Licence Renewed
• Charles L. Grant – Tales from the Nightside
• Alasdair Gray – Lanark
• Jan Guillou – Ondskan
• Thomas Harris – Red Dragon
• Frank Herbert – God Emperor of Dune
• Douglas Hill – Planet of the Warlord
• Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp – The Flame Knife
• John Irving – The Hotel New Hampshire
• Rona Jaffe – Mazes and Monsters
• Alan Judd – A Breed of Heroes
• Ismail Kadare – The File on H
• Stephen King – Cujo
• Chart Korbjitti – Khamphiphaksa
• Joe R. Lansdale – Act of Love
• Stanisław Lem – Golem XIV
• Colleen McCullough – An Indecent Obsession
• Elliot S! Maggin – Miracle Monday
• Naguib Mahfouz – Arabian Nights and Days
• Ian McEwan – The Comfort of Strangers
• Toni Morrison – Tar Baby
• Robert B. Parker
• *A Savage Place
• *Early Autumn
• Ellis Peters
• *Saint Peter's Fair
• *The Leper of Saint Giles
• Terry Pratchett – Strata
• Bano Qudsia – Raja Gidh
• Jean Raspail – Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie
• Alain Robbe-Grillet – Djinn
• Harold Robbins – Goodbye, Janette
• Lawrence Sanders – The Third Deadly Sin
• Martin Cruz Smith – Gorky Park
• Anja Snellman – Sonja O. kävi täällä
• Muriel Spark – Loitering with Intent
• Botho Strauß – Couples, Passersby
• Paul Theroux – The Mosquito Coast
• D. M. Thomas – The White Hotel
• John Updike – Rabbit Is Rich
• Jack Vance – The Book of Dreams
• Mario Vargas Llosa – The War of the End of the World
• Gore Vidal – Creation
• Joseph Wambaugh – The Glitter Dome
• Kit Williams – Masquerade
• Gene Wolfe
• *The Claw of the Conciliator
• *The Sword of the Lictor
• Roger Zelazny
• *The Changing Land
• *Madwand

  Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – Jumanji
• Hans Christian Andersen – Michael Hague's Favourite Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
• Judy Blume – Tiger Eyes
• Roald Dahl – George's Marvellous Medicine
• Rumer Godden – The Dragon of Og
• Roger Hargreaves – Little Miss
• Harold Lamb – Durandal
• Michael de Larrabeiti – The Borribles Go for Broke
• Janet Lunn – The Root Cellar
• Patricia Lynch – The Turf-Cutter's Donkey
• Michelle Magorian – Goodnight Mister Tom
• C. L. Moore - Scarlet Dream
• Uri Orlev – The Island on Bird Street
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat is Very Bad
• Bill Peet – Encore for Eleanor
• Alvin Schwartz – Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
• Maurice Sendak – Outside Over There
• Robert Westall – The Scarecrows

  Drama

• Samuel Beckett – Rockaby
• Edward Bond – Restoration
• Tankred Dorst – Merlin oder das wüste Land
• John Krizanc – Tamara
• Larry Shue – The Nerd
• Barney Simon – Woza Albert!
• Botho Strauß – Kalldewey, Farce
• Patrick Süskind – Der Kontrabaß
• Peter Whelan – The Accrington Pals
• Tennessee Williams – The Notebook of Trigorin

  Poetry

• L. Sprague de Camp – Heroes and Hobgoblins
• Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – Rang-o-Noor
• Norman Nicholson – Sea to the West
• Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes
• Kathleen Raine – Collected Poems, 1935–1980
• Richard L. Tierney – Collected Poems

  Non-fiction

• Maya Angelou – The Heart of a Woman
• Colin Robert Chase – The Dating of Beowulf
• Mary Chesnut – Mary Chesnut's Civil War
• Hugo Brandt Corstius – Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde
• Daniel Dennett – Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
• Nancy C. Dorian – Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect
• Timothy Findley – Famous Last Words
• Stephen Jay Gould – The Mismeasure of Man
• Dumas Malone – The Sage of Monticello
• V. S. Naipaul – '
• Giovanni Pettinato – The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay
• Anne Scott-James – The Cottage Garden
• Ian Smith – '
• Viktor Suvorov – The Liberators
• Xu Zhongyu – University Chinese

  Births

• July 10 – Karen Russell, American novelist
• September 30 – Cecelia Ahern, Irish novelist
• October 3 – Leïla Slimani, Franco-Moroccan novelist
• December 10 – NoViolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwe-born novelist
• December 13 – Mathis Bailey, American-Canadian novelist and fiction writer

• Amy Sackville, English novelist
• Sunjeev Sahota, English novelist

  Deaths

• January 9 – A. J. Cronin, Scottish novelist
• February 17 – David Garnett, English novelist
• February 23 – Nan Shepherd, Scottish novelist and poet
• March 7 – Bosley Crowther, American film critic
• March 20 – Pedro García Cabrera, Spanish poet
• March 29 – Clive Sansom, English-born Tasmanian poet and playwright
• April 23 – Josep Pla, Catalan Spanish journalist and writer
• April 26 – Robert Garioch, Scottish poet
• May 8 – Uri Zvi Grinberg, Israeli poet writing in Hebrew and Yiddish
• May 9 – Nelson Algren, American novelist
• May 18 – William Saroyan, American novelist and dramatist
• May 30 – Gwendolyn B. Bennett, African American writer and artist
• June 15 – Philip Toynbee, English novelist and journalist
• September 3 – Alec Waugh, English novelist
• September 12 – Eugenio Montale, Italian poet
• December 26 – Amber Reeves, New Zealand-born English scholar, feminist and novelist

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Elias Canetti

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Chris Matthews, Al Jazzar; Tim Winton, An Open Swimmer
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Alan Gould, Astral Sea
• Miles Franklin Award: Peter Carey, Bliss

  Canada

• See 1981 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Lucien Bodard, Anne Marie
• Prix Médicis French: François-Olivier Rousseau, L'Enfant d'Édouard
• Prix Médicis International: David Shahar, Le Jour de la comtesse

  Spain

• Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Octavio Paz

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Westall, The Scarecrows
• Cholmondeley Award: Roy Fisher, Robert Garioch, Charles Boyle
• Eric Gregory Award: Alan Jenkins, Simon Rae, Marion Lomax, Philip Gross, Kathleen Jamie, Mark Abley, Roger Crowley, Ian Gregson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, and Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: Unicorn Among Lions
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: D. J. Enright
• Whitbread Best Book Award: William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa

  United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Kathy Calloway, Heart of the Garfish
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Malcolm Cowley
• Dos Passos Prize: Gilbert Sorrentino
• Nebula Award: Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Schuyler: The Morning of the Poem

  Elsewhere

• Hugo Award for Best Novel: The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
• Premio Nadal: Carmen Gómez Ojea, Cantiga de aguero