1989 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1989.

Events

February 14 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran (died 3 June 1989), issues a fatwa calling for the death of Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie and his publishers for issuing the novel The Satanic Verses (1988). On February 24 Iran places a US $3 million bounty on Rushdie's head. On August 3, 1989, a bomb kills Mustafa Mazeh in London as he attempts to plant it in a hotel, in order to carry out the fatwa.
March 1 – The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 comes into effect in the United States, making the country a party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886.
April 23 – Leading figures of the theatre mark William Shakespeare's birthday with a street party to oppose the destruction of the recently-discovered archaeological remains of the English Renaissance Rose Theatre and Globe theatres in London.
October – The National Library of Norway is established, with a new building at Mo i Rana.
December 29 – Playwright Václav Havel becomes President of Czechoslovakia.

New books

Fiction

Hanan al-Shaykh – Women of Sand and Myrrh (Misk al–ghazal)
Martin Amis – London Fields
Piers Anthony – Total Recall
Iain Banks – Canal Dreams
John Banville – The Book of Evidence
Clive Barker – The Great and Secret Show
Julian Barnes – A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
Thomas Berger – Changing the Past
Larry Bond – Red Phoenix
Larry Brown – Dirty Work
Anthony Burgess – Any Old Iron
Nick Cave – And the Ass Saw the Angel
Tom Clancy – Clear and Present Danger
Mary Higgins Clark – While My Pretty One Sleeps
Hugh Cook – The Wicked and the Witless
Bernard Cornwell
- Sharpe's Revenge
- Sea Lord (aka Killer's Wake)
Bryce Courtenay – The Power of One
Robert Crais – Stalking the Angel
Lindsey Davis – The Silver Pigs
L. Sprague de Camp
- The Honorable Barbarian
- (with Fletcher Pratt) – The Complete Compleat Enchanter
E. L. Doctorow – Billy Bathgate
Katherine Dunn – Geek Love
Umberto Eco – Foucault's Pendulum
George Alec Effinger – A Fire in the Sun
Mircea Eliade (died 1986) – Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent (Romanul adolescentului miop) (written 1921–1925)
Ben Elton – Stark
Steve Erickson – Tours of the Black Clock
Laura Esquivel – Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate)
Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth
Frederick Forsyth – The Negotiator
Jon Fosse – Naustet (Boathouse)
Gabriel García Márquez – The General in His Labyrinth (El general en su laberinto)
John Gardner
- Licence to Kill
- Win, Lose or Die
Charles Gill – The Boozer Challenge
John Grisham – A Time to Kill
A. M. Homes – Jack
Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – The Conan Chronicles
John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
Fleur Jaeggy – it:I beati anni del castigo (Sweet Days of Discipline)
Randall Kenan – A Visitation of Spirits
Elias Khoury – رحلة غاندي الصغير (Rihlat Ghandi al-saghir, The Journey of Little Gandhi)
Stephen King – The Dark Half
László Krasznahorkai – The Melancholy of Resistance (Az ellenállás melankóliája)
Joe R. Lansdale
- Cold in July
- By Bizarre Hands
John le Carré – The Russia House
H. P. Lovecraft – The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (corrected edition)
Hilary Mantel – Fludd
Javier Marías – Todas las almas (All Souls)
James A. Michener – Six Days in Havana
Hanna Mina – The End of a Brave Man (Nihayat Rajul Shujaa)
Bharati Mukherjee – Jasmine
Larry Niven – The Legacy of Heorot
Joyce Carol Oates – American Appetites
Robert B. Parker – Playmates
Ellis Peters
- The Heretic's Apprentice
- The Potter's Field
Giuseppe Pontiggia – La grande sera
Terry Pratchett
- Guards! Guards!
- Pyramids
Paul Quarrington – Whale Music
Mordecai Richler – Solomon Gursky Was Here
Giampaolo Rugarli – Il nido di ghiaccio
José Saramago – The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Sidney Sheldon – The Sands of Time
Dan Simmons – Hyperion
John Skipp and Craig Spector – Book of the Dead
Danielle Steel
- Daddy
- Star
Bruce Sterling – Crystal Express
Alexander Stuart – The War Zone
Amy Tan – The Joy Luck Club
Shashi Tharoor – The Great Indian Novel
Rose Tremain – Restoration
Jane Vandenburgh – Failure to Zig-Zag
Andrew Vachss – Hard Candy
Alice Walker – The Temple of My Familiar
Robert McLiam Wilson – Ripley Bogle
Roger Zelazny
- Frost & Fire (short stories and essays)
- Knight of Shadows
Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

Children and young people

Verna Aardema – Rabbit Makes a Monkey of Lion
Joyce Barkhouse – Pit Pony
Bruce Coville – My Teacher Is an Alien
Anne Fine
- Bill's New Frock
- Goggle-Eyes
Mark Helprin (with Chris Van Allsburg) – Swan Lake
Yoshi Kogo – Big Al
Norman Maclean (with Barry Moser) – A River Runs Through It
Bill Martin Jr. (with Lois Ehlert) – Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
David McKee – Elmer
Jim Murphy – The Call Of The Wolves
Bill Peet – Bill Peet: An Autobiography
Robert D. San Souci – The Talking Eggs: A Folktale from the American South
Jon Scieszka (with Lane Smith) – The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!
R. L. Stine – The New Girl (first in the Fear Street series of 55 books)
Christopher Tolkien (with J. R. R. Tolkien and Alan Lee) – The Treason of Isengard
Hélène Desputeaux – Caillou
Michael Rosen – We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Drama

Herman Brusselmans and Tom Lanoye – De Canadese muur (The Canadian Wall)
Jim Cartwright – Two
Nick Darke – Kissing the Pope (original title: Campesinos)
Michael Wall – Amongst Barbarians
Keith Waterhouse – Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Poetry

Simon Armitage – Zoom!
Paul Fleischman – Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
David Lehman – The Best American Poetry 1989

Non-fiction

Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg – Angst und Vorurteil
Bill Bryson – The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
Rodney Cotterill – No Ghost in the Machine: Modern Science and the Brain, the Mind, and the Soul
Stephen R. Covey – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Bruno Dagens – Angkor: Heart of an Asian Empire
William Dalrymple – In Xanadu: A Quest
Cynthia Enloe – Bananas, Beaches and Bases
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon – Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony
Rüdiger Imhof – John Banville: A Critical Introduction, the first full-length appraisal of the work of major turn of the century writer John Banville.
Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell
Pauline Kael – Hooked
Bob Kane and Tom Andrae – Batman and Me
John Keegan – The Face of Battle
Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson – And Their Children After Them
Peter Mayle – A Year in Provence
Claudia Moatti – The Search for Ancient Rome
Ann Moir and David Jessel – Brain Sex
New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Michael Palin – Around the World in 80 Days
Harold Perkin – The Rise of Professional Society. England Since 1880
Gilda Radner – It's Always Something
Peter Sloterdijk – Infinite Mobilization (Eurotaoismus)
Dan Topolski and Patrick Robinson – True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny
V. Vale and Andrea Juno – Modern Primitives
Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett – The Andy Warhol Diaries
Jeremy Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence
Bob Wood – Big Ten Country

Births

August 26 - Sara Raasch, American young-adult fiction writer

Deaths

January 4 – Srikrishna Alanahalli, Indian novelist and poet (born 1947)
January 8 – Bruce Chatwin, English travel writer and novelist (born 1940)
February 3 – John Cassavetes, American actor, director and writer (born 1929)
February 12 – Thomas Bernhard, Austrian author (born 1931)
February 21 – Denys Corley Smith, English author and journalist (born 1922)
March 14 – Edward Abbey, American essayist (born 1927)
March 27 – Malcolm Cowley, American novelist and poet (born 1898)
April 14 – Laurence Meynell (Valerie Baxter, A. Stephen Tring), English novelist and children's writer (born 1899)
April 19 – Daphne du Maurier, English novelist (born 1907)
May 19 – C. L. R. James, Trinidad-born American journalist (born 1901)
May 20 – Erzsébet Galgóczi, Hungarian novelist, playwright and screenwriter (born 1930)
July 31 – Zhou Yang, Chinese literary theorist (born 1908)
August 23 – R. D. Laing, Scottish psychologist and author (born 1927)
August 26 – Irving Stone, American novelist (born 1903)
September 4
- Georges Simenon, Belgian novelist and crime writer (born 1903)
- Sir Ronald Syme, New Zealand classicist (born 1903)
September 13 – Acharya Aatreya, Telugu screenwriter (born 1921)
September 15 – Robert Penn Warren, American poet and novelist (born 1905)
September 30
- Horace Alexander, English current-affairs writer and ornithologist (born 1909)
- Oskar Davičo, Serbian novelist and poet (born 1909)
October 13 – Cesare Zavattini, Italian screenwriter (born 1902)
November 22 – José Guadalupe Cruz, Mexican comics writer (born 1917)
December 5 – George Selden (Terry Andrews), American children's author (gastrointestinal bleeding, born 1929)
December 19 – Stella Gibbons, English novelist (born 1902)
December 22 – Samuel Beckett, Irish-born playwright, novelist and poet (born 1906)
December 26 – Paul Jennings, English humorist (born 1918)