1991 in literature

Events

• February – Sisters Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave make their first and only joint appearance on stage, with niece Jemma Redgrave as Irina, in the title rôles of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Queen's Theatre, London.
• July 11 – Hitoshi Igarashi, Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, is stabbed to death at the University of Tsukuba during The Satanic Verses controversy, in accordance with a fatwa against those involved in circulating the book.
• October – Irvine Welsh's first published fiction, the short story "The First Day of the Edinbugh Festival", appears in New Writing Scotland. It is later incorporated into Trainspotting.
• November 4 – An archaeological expedition is launched, eventually resulting in the discovery of a mass grave and identification of the body of the novelist Alain-Fournier, 77 years after his death as Lieutenant Henri-Alban Fournier in World War I. His bones are interred at Saint-Remy-la-Calonne.

  New books

Fiction

• Julia Alvarez – How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
• Martin Amis – Time's Arrow: or the Nature of the Offence
• Piers Anthony
• *Tatham Mound
• *Question Quest
• *Virtual Mode
• Jeffrey Archer – As the Crow Flies
• Beryl Bainbridge – The Birthday Boys
• Clive Barker – Imajica
• Pat Barker – Regeneration
• Julian Barnes – Talking It Over
• Louis Begley – Wartime Lies
• Louis de Bernières – Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord
• A. S. Byatt – '
• Agatha Christie – Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories
• Tom Clancy – The Sum of All Fears
• Mary Higgins Clark – Loves Music, Loves to Dance
• Hugh Cook – The Werewolf and the Wormlord
• Paul Cornell – '
• Bernard Cornwell – Stormchild
• Douglas Coupland – '
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – The Pixilated Peeress
• Don DeLillo – Mao II
• Terrance Dicks – '
• Assia Djebar – Far from Medina
• Stephen R. Donaldson
• *The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story
• *The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge
• Roddy Doyle – The Van
• Kaori Ekuni – Kirakira Hikaru
• Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho
• Stephen Fry – The Liar
• Diana Gabaldon – Outlander
• Neil Gaiman
• *'
• *'
• John Gardner – The Man from Barbarossa
• David Gates – Jernigan
• Ann Granger – Say It With Poison
• John Grisham – The Firm
• Josephine Hart – Damage
• Elisabeth Harvor – Our Lady of All Distances
• Mark Jacobson – Gojiro
• Stephen King – Needful Things
• John le Carré – The Secret Pilgrim
• Leslie Marmon Silko – Almanac of the Dead
• Penelope Lively – City of the Mind
• Morgan Llywelyn – Druids
• James A. Michener – Mexico
• Rohinton Mistry – Such a Long Journey
• Timothy Mo – The Redundancy of Courage
• Cees Nooteboom – The Following Story
• Ben Okri – The Famished Road
• Leonardo Padura Fuentes – Pasado perfecto
• John Peel – '
• Tito Perdue – Lee
• Ellis Peters – The Summer of the Danes
• Marge Piercy – He, She and It
• Terry Pratchett
• *Reaper Man
• *Witches Abroad
• Jean Raspail – Sire
• Alexandra Ripley – Scarlett
• J. Jill Robinson – Saltwater Trees
• Nigel Robinson – '
• Bernice Rubens – A Solitary Grief
• Norman Rush – Mating
• José Saramago – The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
• Michael Shaara – For Love of the Game
• Sidney Sheldon – The Doomsday Conspiracy
• Jane Smiley – A Thousand Acres
• Danielle Steel – Heartbeat
• James B. Stewart – Den of Thieves
• Michael Swanwick – Gravity's Angels
• Antonio Tabucchi –
• Amy Tan – The Kitchen God's Wife
• Andrew Vachss – Sacrifice
• Bernard Werber – Empire of the Ants
• Tim Winton – Cloudstreet
• Helen Zahavi – Dirty Weekend
• Timothy Zahn – Heir to the Empire
• Haifa Zangana – Through the Vast Halls of Memory
• Roger Zelazny – Prince of Chaos

  Children and young people

• Chester Aaron – Im Wettlauf mit der Zeit
• Arnold Adoff – In for Winter, Out for Spring
• Chris Van Allsburg – The Wretched Stone
• Avi –
• Margaret Barbalet - The Wolf
• Berlie Doherty – Dear Nobody
• Sarah Ellis – Pick-Up Sticks
• Jostein Gaarder – Sophie's World , English translation 1995
• Sonia Levitin – The Man Who Kept His Heart in a Bucket
• Andre Norton – Catfantastic II
• Martin Waddell – Farmer Duck
• Jacqueline Wilson – The Story of Tracy Beaker
• G. Clifton Wisler – Red Cap

  Drama

• Ariel Dorfman – Death and the Maiden
• Tony Kushner –
• Philip Ridley – The Pitchfork Disney
• Neil Simon – Lost in Yonkers
• George Tabori – Goldberg Variations

  Poetry

Non-fiction

• Dionne Brand – No Burden to Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario
• Marjorie Chibnall – Empress Matilda
• Henry Steele Commager – Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples
• Jung Chang – Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
• Françoise Dunand – '
• Koenraad Elst – '
• Dave Foreman – Confessions of an Eco-Warrior
• Robert Hart – Forest Gardening: Rediscovering Nature and Community in a Post-Industrial Age
• Albert Hourani – A History of the Arab Peoples
• Anne Hugon – '
• Alan Macfarlane – The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683
• Madonna – Sex
• Robert K. Massie – Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War
• Taslima Nasrin – Jabo na keno? jabo
• P.J. O'Rourke – Parliament of Whores
• Thomas Pakenham – The Scramble for Africa
• William Pokhlyobkin – A History of Vodka
• John Richardson – A Life of Picasso
• Simon Schama – Dead Certainties
• Art Spiegelman – Maus: A Survivor's Tale
• Georges Tate – L'Orient des Croisades
• Marie Wadden – '
• Naomi Wolf – The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
• Zhang Chengzhi – History of the Soul

  Births

• Sally Rooney, Irish fiction writer

  Deaths

• January 22 – Robert Choquette, Canadian novelist and poet
• January 23 – Northrop Frye, Canadian literary critic
• January 29 – Yasushi Inoue, Japanese novelist
• February 24 – John Daly, American journalist and game show host
• March 14 – Margery Sharp, English novelist and children's writer
• March 22 – Paul Engle, American poet and novelist
• April 3 – Graham Greene, English novelist
• April 4 – Max Frisch, Swiss playwright and novelist
• April 12 – James Schuyler, American poet
• April 15 – Dante Milano, Brazilian modernist poet
• May 3 – Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-American novelist
• May 31 – Angus Wilson, English novelist
• June 24 – Sumner Locke Elliott, Australian-American author and playwright
• July 24 – Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born Jewish-American novelist
• August 1 – Yusuf Idris, Egyptian writer
• August 17 – Terence Kilmartin, Irish journalist and translator
• September 4 – Peggy Ramsay, British theatrical agent
• September 24 – Dr. Seuss, American children's writer
• September 27 – Roy Fuller, English poet
• October 11 – Steven "Jesse" Bernstein, American performance poet
• October 12 – Arkady Strugatsky, Russian science fiction writer
• October 16 – Leon Levițchi, Romanian translator
• October 27 – George Barker, English poet
• November 29 – Frank Yerby, African American historical novelist

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Nadine Gordimer
• Camões Prize: José Craveirinha

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Andrew McGahan, Praise
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Jennifer Maiden, The Winter Baby
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Jennifer Maiden, The Winter Baby
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Jean Kent, Verandahs
• Miles Franklin Award: David Malouf, The Great World

  Canada

• See 1991 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• The Edna Staebler Award is established to honor the best literary work of creative non-fiction by a Canadian author who had published their first or second writing within the preceding year.
• Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Susan Mayse,
• Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime: Susan Mayse, Ginger

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Pierre Combescot, Les Filles du Calvaire
• Prix Décembre: Raphaël Confiant, Eau de café
• Prix Médicis: Pierre Simon, La Dérive des sentiments

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Berlie Doherty, Dear Nobody
• Cholmondeley Award: James Berry, Sujata Bhatt, Michael Hulse, Derek Mahon
• Eric Gregory Award: Roddy Lumsden, Glyn Maxwell, Stephen Smith, Wayne Burrows, Jackie Kay
• Guardian Fiction Award: Alan Judd, The Devil's Own Work
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Iain Sinclair, Downriver
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Judith Wright
• Whitbread Best Book Award: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso
• The Sunday Express Book of the Year: Michael Frayn, A Landing on the Sun

  United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Julia Kasdorf, Sleeping Preacher
• Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: John Frederick Nims
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry: Richard Wilbur
• Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Donald Hall, The Museum of Clear Ideas
• Compton Crook Award: Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind
• Frost Medal: Donald Hall
• Nebula Award: Michael Swanwick, Stations of the Tide
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Neil Simon, Lost in Yonkers
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Updike: Rabbit at Rest
• Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction: Edward O. Wilson: The Ants
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Mona Van Duyn: Near Changes
• Whiting Awards:

  Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal: Alfredo Conde Cid, Los otros días