1990 in literature

Events

• March – Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters opens at the Gate Theatre in Dublin with locally born Sinéad, Sorcha and Niamh Cusack in the title rôles and their father Cyril Cusack as Dr. Chebutykin.
• c. June – J. K. Rowling has the idea for Harry Potter while on a train from Manchester to London: "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed. The basic idea was for a boy who didn't know what he was." She begins writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which will be completed in 1995 and published in 1997.
• October – Nicci Gerrard marries Sean French in the London Borough of Hackney, to make up a writing team known as Nicci French.

• Austrian writer Ernest Bornemann is awarded the first Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for sexual research.

  New books

Fiction

• Felipe Alfau – Chromos
• Iain M. Banks – Use of Weapons
• Hoda Barakat – The Stone of Laughter
• Greg Bear – Heads and Queen of Angels
• Thomas Berger – Orrie's Story
• Louis de Bernières – The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
• William Boyd – Brazzaville Beach
• Ray Bradbury – A Graveyard for Lunatics
• John Bradshaw – Homecoming
• A.S. Byatt – Possession
• Tom Clancy – Clear and Present Danger
• Hugh Cook – The Wazir and the Witch and The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers
• Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Waterloo and Crackdown
• Michael Crichton – Jurassic Park
• Jim Dodge – Stone Junction
• Roddy Doyle – The Snapper
• Dominick Dunne – An Inconvenient Woman
• James Ellroy – L.A. Confidential
• Neil Gaiman –
• Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – Good Omens
• John Kenneth Galbraith – A Tenured Professor
• John Gardner – Brokenclaw
• Elizabeth George – Well-Schooled in Murder
• Andrew Greeley – The Cardinal Virtues
• Peter Høeg - Tales of the Night
• Elizabeth Jane Howard – The Light Years, first of the Cazalet series
• Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – The Conan Chronicles 2
• Marsha Hunt – Joy
• Monica Hughes – Invitation to the Game
• P. D. James – Devices and Desires
• Charles Johnson – Middle Passage
• Robert Jordan – The Eye of the World
• Mitsuyo Kakuta – Kōfuku na yūgi
• Imre Kertész – Kaddish for an Unborn Child
• Jamaica Kincaid – Lucy
• Stephen King – Four Past Midnight and The Stand
• Hanif Kureishi – The Buddha of Suburbia
• Joe R Lansdale – Savage Season
• Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty
• Robert Ludlum – The Bourne Ultimatum
• Ian McEwan – The Innocent
• Patrick McGrath – Spider
• Alan Moore and David Lloyd – V for Vendetta
• Brian Moore – Lies of Silence
• Alice Munro – Friend of My Youth
• Bảo Ninh – The Sorrow of War
• Tim O'Brien – The Things They Carried
• Yōko Ogawa – Pregnancy Calendar
• Orhan Pamuk – The Black Book
• Robert B. Parker – Stardust
• Rosamund Pilcher – September
• Belva Plain – Harvest
• Terry Pratchett – Eric and Moving Pictures
• Thomas Pynchon – Vineland
• W. G. Sebald – Vertigo
• Lucius Shepard – The Ends of the Earth
• Danielle Steel – Message From Nam
• James Tiptree, Jr. – Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
• Christopher Tolkien and Alan Lee – The War of the Ring
• Scott Turow – The Burden of Proof
• John Updike – Rabbit at Rest
• Andrew Vachss – Blossom
• Kurt Vonnegut – Hocus Pocus
• Harry L. Watson – Liberty and Power
• John Edgar Wideman – Philadelphia Fire
• Banana Yoshimoto – Amrita

  Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – Just a Dream
• Avi – The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
• Gillian Cross – Wolf
• Lynley Dodd - Slinky Malinki
• Crescent Dragonwagon – Home Place
• Rumer Godden – Fu-Dog
• Ken Kesey – Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear
• Jean Marzollo – Pretend You're a Cat
• Terenci Moix – Los Grandes Mitos del Cine
• Jim Murphy – '
• Bill Peet – Cock-a-doodle Dudley
• Salman Rushdie – Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Dr. Seuss – Oh, the Places You'll Go
• Diane Stanley – '
• Jacqueline Wilson – Glubbslyme

  Drama

• Brian Friel – Dancing at Lughnasa
• Declan Hughes – I Can't Get Started
• John Guare – Six Degrees of Separation
• Girish Karnad – Taledanda
• Peter Shaffer – Lettice and Lovage

  Poetry

• Derek Walcott – Omeros

  Non-fiction

• Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine – Last Chance to See
• Bill Bryson – The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
• Judith Butler – Gender Trouble
• Cheikh Anta Diop – Alerte sous les tropiques: articles 1946–1960: culture et développement en Afrique noire
• Dougal Dixon – '
• Arun Shourie and Sita Ram Goel –
• Ryszard Kapuscinski – The Soccer War
• Michael Lynch – : A New History
• Susan Mayse – '
• James A. Michener – Pilgrimage
• Taslima Nasrin – Nirbachito Column
• V. S. Naipaul – : A Million Mutinies Now
• Raphael Patai – The Hebrew Goddess
• Ronald Reagan – An American Life
• Barry Siegel – A Death in White Bear Lake
• Gary Snyder – The Practice of the Wild
• Hans-Jürgen Syberberg – On the Fortunes and Misfortunes of Art in Post-War Germany

  Births

• March 29 – Kiran Millwood Hargrave, English poet, playwright and novelist

  Deaths

• February 27 – Alexandru Rosetti, Romanian linguist, editor and memoirist
• May 10 – Walker Percy, American novelist
• May 25 – Lucy M. Boston, English children's novelist
• July 15 – Zaim Topčić, Yugoslav and Bosnian writer
• July 22 – Manuel Puig, Argentine novelist
• August 25 – Morley Callaghan, Canadian novelist, playwright and broadcasting personality
• September 8 – Denys Watkins-Pitchford, English children's writer
• September 26 – Alberto Moravia, Italian novelist and journalist
• September 30 – Patrick White, Australian novelist
• October 23 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher
• November 7 – Lawrence Durrell, English novelist, dramatist, and travel writer
• November 8 – Anya Seton, American genre novelist
• November 23 – Roald Dahl, Welsh-born children's author
• November 24 – Dodie Smith, English novelist and dramatist
• December 1 – Irma Chilton, Welsh children's writer in Welsh and English
• December 7 – Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright
• December 11 – David Turner, English dramatist
• December 20 – Andrea Dunbar, English playwright
• December 14 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss dramatist

• Clare Hoskyns-Abrahall, English biographer and children's writer

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Octavio Paz
• Europe Theatre Prize: Giorgio Strehler
• Camões Prize: João Cabral de Melo Neto

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Gillian Mears, The Mint Lawn
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Robert Adamson, The Clean Dark
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Robert Adamson, The Clean Dark
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Kristopher Rassemussen, In the Name of the Father
• Miles Franklin Award: Tom Flood, Oceana Fine

  Canada

• See 1990 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Jean Rouaud, Les Champs d'honneur
• Prix Décembre: François Maspero, Les Passagers du Roissy–Express
• Prix Médicis French: Les Quartiers d'hiver – Jean-Noël Pancrazi
• Prix Médicis International: Amitav Ghosh, Les Feux du Bengale

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: A. S. Byatt,
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Gillian Cross, Wolf
• Cholmondeley Award: Kingsley Amis, Elaine Feinstein, Michael O'Neill
• Eric Gregory Award: Nicholas Drake, Maggie Hannan, William Park, Jonathan Davidson, Lavinia Greenlaw, Don Paterson, John Wells
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Sorley Maclean
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Nicholas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters
• The Sunday Express Book of the Year: J. M. Coetzee, Age of Iron

  United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Debra Allbery, Walking Distance
• Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: W. S. Merwin
• Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Christopher Logue, Kings
• Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry: James Merrill, The Inner Room
• Caldecott Award: Ed Young, Lon Po Po: A Red–Riding Hood Story from China
• Compton Crook Award: Josepha Sherman, The Shining Falcon
• Frost Medal: Denise Levertov / James Laughlin
• Hugo Award for Best Novel: Dan Simmons for Hyperion
• National Book Award for Fiction: Charles Johnson for Middle Passage
• Nebula Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: August Wilson, The Piano Lesson
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Oscar Hijuelos for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Charles Simic: The World Doesn't End
• Whiting Awards:

  Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal, Juan José Millás, La soledad era esto