Calendar of Literary Facts
1989
- Kazuo Ishiguro receives the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day
- Anita Desai publishes Baumgartner’s Bombay
- Kazuo Ishiguro publishes The Remains of the Day
- Allan Gurganus publishes Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- Wendy Wasserstein receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Heidi Chronicles
- John Le Carré publishes The Russia House
- Tom Clancy publishes Clear and Present Danger
- Mordecai Richler publishes Solomon Gursky Was Here
- Islamic leaders denounce The Satanic Verses as blasphemous and order the death of author Salman Rushdie, who goes into hiding
- In Texas v. Johnson the U.S. Supreme Court declares flag-burning a form of protected speech
- The Human Genome Project is launched; its purpose is to map human genetic makeup
- Two California school districts ban an illustrated edition of the story “Little Red Riding Hood (because the heroine is depicted bringing food and wine to her grandmother; this raised concerns about alcohol use)
- Reformist Solidarity candidates win large majorities in Polish elections
- The “Velvet Revolution” transpires in Czechoslovakia; playwright Vaclav Havel becomes president
- The communist government of Rumania is overthrown; dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is executed
- In “Operation Just Cause,” U.S. troops invade Panama, arrest dictator Manuel Noriega, and install a new government
- Anne Tyler receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Breathing Lessons
- Eileen Goudge publishes Garden of Lies
- John Irving publishes A Prayer for Owen Meany
- The Berlin Wall comes down, and the communist East German government resigns
- Oscar Hijuelos publishes The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
- Tecumseh’s God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War is published
- Charles Simic publishes The World Doesn’t End
- Amy Tan publishes The Joy Luck Club
- Camilo José Cela receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- David Henry Hwang publishes M. Butterfly
- May Swenson dies (December 4)
- Georges Simenon dies (September 4)
- Barbara W. Tuchman dies (February 6)
- Sterling Brown dies (January 13)
- Edward Abbey dies (March 14)
- Robert Penn Warren dies (September 15)
- Nicolás Guillén dies (July 16)
- Bruce Chatwin dies (January 18)
- Daphne Du Maurier dies (April 19)
- Samuel Beckett dies (December 22)
- Donald Barthelme dies (July 23)
- Irving Stone dies (August 26)
- Malcolm Cowley dies (March 27)
- A(lfred) J(ules) Ayer dies (June 27)