Calendar of Literary Facts
1990
- Walter Mosley introduces his fictional detective Easy Rawlins in the novel Devil in a Blue Dress
- Joy Harjo publishes In Mad Love and War
- Michael Crichton publishes Jurassic Park
- A. S. Byatt publishes Possession
- Edward Bond publishes Jackets
- At an environmental conference in London, representatives over 80 nations sign an agreement to stop producing CFCs, damaging to the ozone layer, by the year 2000
- Helmut Kohl is elected chancellor of Germany—a nation reunited for the first time since 1945
- Unrest in Kosovo grows; the Yugoslavian government intervenes
- The Marxist Sandinistas fall from power in Nicaragua
- Iraqi forces invade Kuwait; the U.N. imposes sanctions, and a coalition of powers prepares for war with Iraq
- Oscar Hijuelos receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
- A. S. Byatt receives the Booker Prize for Possession
- Imre Kertész publishes Kaddis a meg nem születetett gyermekért (Kaddish for a Child Not Born)
- Patricia Cornwell publishes Postmortem
- Mordecai Richler receives the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Solomon Gursky Was Here
- Charles Simic receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The World Doesn’t End
- August Wilson publishes The Piano Lesson
- Derek Walcott publishes Omeros
- John Updike publishes Rabbit at Rest
- Octavio Paz receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Mona Van Duyn publishes Near Changes: Poems
- Michel Tremblay publishes Le Train
- Norman MacLean dies (August 2)
- Lawrence Durrell dies (November 7)
- Reinaldo Arenas dies (December 7)
- Hugh MacLennan dies (November 7)
- Walker Percy dies (May 10)
- South African Black Nationalist Nelson Mandela is freed from prison after 27 years of confinement (February 11)
- Malcolm Muggeridge dies (November 14)
- Friedrich Duerrenmatt dies (December 14)
- B. F. Skinner dies (August 18)
- Thomas McGrath dies (September 20)
- Manuel Puig dies (July 22)
- Roald Dahl dies (November 24)
- Morley Callaghan dies (August 25)
- Alberto Pincherle dies (September 26)
- Josephine W. Johnson dies (February 27)
- Irving Wallace dies (June 29)
- Patrick White dies (September 30)
