1982 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1982.

Events

• February 17 – Philip K. Dick ignores advice to go immediately to hospital. A fortnight later, after two strokes, he is pronounced brain-dead and disconnected from his life support machine.
• March 18 – A legal case brought on behalf of Mary Whitehouse against theatre director Michael Bogdanov concerning alleged indecency in a performance of Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain at the National Theatre in London is dropped after the Attorney General intervenes.^[1][2]
• September – Banned Books Week instituted in the United States.
• La Bicyclette Bleue (The Blue Bicycle) by Régine Deforges becomes France's best selling novel ever.
• The Oxford Shakespeare under the general editorship of Stanley Wells begins publication.

New prose fiction

• Brian Aldiss – Helliconia Spring (First of the Helliconia trilogy)
• Isabel Allende – The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus)
• Isaac Asimov – Foundation's Edge
• Jean M. Auel – The Valley of Horses
• Lynne Reid Banks – The Indian in the Cupboard
• Julian Barnes – Before She Met Me
• Michael Bishop – Blooded on Arachne
• William Boyd – An Ice-Cream War
• Arthur C. Clarke – 2010: Odyssey Two
• Shirley Conran – Lace
• Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Company
• Roald Dahl – The BFG
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid
• L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Barbarian
• August Derleth – The Solar Pons Omnibus
• Marguerite Duras – The Malady of Death
• Ken Follett – The Man from St. Petersburg
• John Fowles – Mantissa
• Max Frisch – Bluebeard
• John Gardner – For Special Services
• Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote
• Kazuo Ishiguro – A Pale View of Hills
• John Jakes – North and South
• Thomas Keneally – Schindler's Ark
• David Kesterton – The Darkling
• Stephen King – Different Seasons, Pet Sematary and The Running Man
• W. P. Kinsella – Shoeless Joe
• Judith Krantz – Mistral's Daughter
• Morgan Llywelyn – The Horse Goddess
• Robert Ludlum – The Parsifal Mosaic
• Colleen McCullough – An Indecent Obsession
• Russell McCormmach – Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist
• George R. R. Martin – Fevre Dream
• James Merrill – The Changing Light at Sandover
• James A. Michener – Space
• Timothy Mo – Sour Sweet
• Harry Mulisch – The Assault
• Chris Mullin – A Very British Coup
• Haruki Murakami – A Wild Sheep Chase (羊をめぐる冒険, Hitsuji o Meguru Bōken)
• Ellis Peters – The Virgin in the Ice
• T. R. Subba Rao – Durgaastamana
• José Saramago – Memorial do Convento (translated as Baltasar and Blimunda)
• Sidney Sheldon – Master of the Game
• Elizabeth Smart – The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals
• Danielle Steel – Crossings
• Sue Townsend – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾
• Kurt Vonnegut – Deadeye Dick
• John Wain – Young Shoulders
• Alice Walker – The Color Purple
• Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice – Water Witch
• Gene Wolfe – The Citadel of the Autarch
• Roger Zelazny – Eye of Cat and Dilvish, the Damned
• Stefan Zweig – The Post Office Girl (Rausch der Verwandlung, "The Intoxication of Transformation")

New drama

• Caryl Churchill – Top Girls
• Peter Flannery – Our Friends in the North
• Michael Frayn – Noises Off
• Elfriede Jelinek – Clara S, musikalische Tragödie
• Maryat Lee and the people of Hinton, West Virginia – A Double-Threaded Life: The Hinton Play
• Stephen MacDonald – Not About Heroes
• Frank McGuinness – The Factory Girls
• Tom Stoppard – The Real Thing
• Pirkko Saisio – Betoniyö

Non-fiction

• Irving Abella and Harold Troper – None is Too Many
• Martin Amis – Invasion of the Space Invaders
• Mark Ellingham (ed.) – The Rough Guide to Greece
• Bruce Feirstein – Real Men Don't Eat Quiche
• Eduardo Galeano – Memoria del fuego ("Memory of Fire"), vol. 1
• Carol Gilligan – In a Different Voice
• Sita Ram Goel – How I Became a Hindu
• Rhys Isaac – The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790
• Ryszard Kapuściński – Shah of Shahs (Szachinszach)
• Gary Kinder – Victim: The Other Side of Murder
• Audre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
• John Naisbitt – Megatrends
• Tom Peters – In Search of Excellence
• Richard Rorty – Consequences of Pragmatism
• Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
• Margaret Trudeau – Consequences
• Rebecca West – 1900

Births

• February 5 – Lauren Gunderson, American playwright
• May 10 – Jeremy Gable, English-American playwright
• June 15 – James Lamont, English television writer

Deaths

• February 11 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer (born 1894)
• February 18 – Dame Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand crime writer and theatre director (born 1895)
• March 2 – Philip K. Dick, American writer (stroke, born 1928)
• March 3 – Georges Perec, French novelist (lung cancer, born 1936)
• March 6 – Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist, playwright and screenwriter (born 1905)
• June 6 – Kenneth Rexroth, American poet and critic (born 1905)
• June 18
  • Djuna Barnes, American writer (born 1892)
  • June 18 – John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer (born 1912)
• July 3 – Engvald Bakkan, Norwegian novelist and children's writer (born 1897)
• September 14 – John Gardner, American novelist (motorcycle accident, born 1933)
• October 7 – Alejandro Núñez Alonso, Spanish novelist (born 1905)
• December 5 – Caryl Brahms, English critic, novelist, and journalist (born 1901)
• December 21 – Ants Oras, Estonian writer (born 1900)
• Unknown dates
  • Ted Lewis, English novelist (born 1940)
  • Barbara Sleigh, English children's writer (born 1906)

Awards

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Gabriel García Márquez

Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Brian Castro, Birds of Passage; Nigel Krauth, Matilda, My Darling
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Fay Zwicky, Kaddish and Other Poems
• Miles Franklin Award: Rodney Hall, Just Relations

Canada

• See 1982 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Dominique Fernandez, dans la main de l'Ange
• Prix Médicis French: Jean-François Josselin, L'Enfer et Cie
• Prix Médicis International: Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Spain

• Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Luis Rosales

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Margaret Mahy, The Haunting
• Cholmondeley Award: Basil Bunting, Herbert Lomas, William Scammell
• Eric Gregory Award: Steve Ellis, Jeremy Reed, Alison Brackenbury, Neil Astley, Chris O'Neill, Joseph Bristow, John Gibbens, James Lasdun
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill

United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Lawrence Joseph, Shouting at No One
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, Bernard Malamud
• Nebula Award for Best Novel: Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Nancy Willard, A Visit to William Blake's Inn
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Charles Fuller, A Soldier's Play
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Updike – Rabbit Is Rich
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems

Elsewhere

• Hugo Award for Best Novel: Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
• Premio Nadal: Fernando Arrabal, La torre herida por un rayo

References

1. ↑ "1982: Judge halts 'obscenity' trial". BBC News. 18 March 1982. Retrieved 2007-11-30. 
2. ↑ Brenton, Howard (28 January 2006). "Look back in anger". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2007-11-30.