1984 - Literature

Literature

Nonfiction: Weapons and Hope by English-born Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, 61, who solved some problems of quantum mechanics in the 1940s, worked with Edward Teller in the 1950s on a small nuclear reactor that emphasized safety, and was a consultant in the 1960s to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future by Richard Pipes; Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War by Helen Caldicott; The Russians and Reagan and Deadly Games: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms by Strobe Talbott; The Good War: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel; Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes is a mixture of biography, literary criticism, and fiction; The Pleasure, Pain, and Politics of Unpaid Work from 1830 to the Present by New York lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer, 34.

Structural philosopher-cultural historian Michel Foucault dies of AIDS at Paris June 25 at age 57 (he has been the most celebrated public intellectual in Europe); philosopher Henry Habberley Price dies at Oxford November 26 at age 85.

Fiction: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesitelna lehkost byti) by Milan Kundera; Bathsheba (Batseba) by Swedish novelist Torgny Lindgren, 46; The Lover (L'Amant) by Marguerite Duras, now 70; The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (O Ano a Morte de Ricardo Reis) by José Saramago; The Ark Sakura (Hakobune Sakura-maru) by Kobo Abe; Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories by Saul Bellow; Neuromancer by South Carolina-born "cyberpunk" science-fiction writer William (Ford) Gibson, 36, who has used the term cyberspace for the first time in a short story; Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie; Love Medicine by Minnesota-born novelist (Karen) Louise Erdrich, 30 (whose mother is a Chippewa); The Haj by Leon Uris; House on Mango Street by Chicago-born novelist Sandra Cisneros, 29; Family Dancing (stories) by Pittsburgh-born author David Leavitt, 23; The Tie That Binds by Colorado-born novelist Kent Haruf, 41; God Knows by Joseph Heller; Fragments by Chicago-born novelist Jack Fuller, 38; Lincoln by Gore Vidal; The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa; Hôtel du Lac by Anita Brookner; The Lights of Earth by Margaret Drabble; Foreign Bodies by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison; Stones for Ibarra by Pasadena, Calif.-born novelist Harriet Doerr, 74; Golden States by Cincinnati-born novelist Michael Cunningham, 31; Voices from the Moon (novella) and We Don't Live Here Anymore (stories) by Andre Dubus; Separate Checks by Lancaster, Pa.-born novelist Marianne Wiggins, 37; Dreams of Sleep by Charleston novelist Josephine Humphreys, 39.

Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar dies of leukemia at Paris February 12 at age 69; Nobel novelist Mikhail Sholokhov at Veshenskaya, Rostov-on-Don, February 21 at age 78; Jessamyn West of a stroke at Napa, Calif., February 25 at age 81; Sylvia Ashton-Warner at Tauranga, New Zealand, April 28 at age 75; Irwin Shaw of a heart attack at Davos, Switzerland, May 16 at age 71; novelist-essayist J. B. Priestley at Stratford-on-Avon August 14 at age 89, having aroused controversy by refusing a knighthood; Truman Capote is found dead at Los Angeles August 25 at age 59; Liam O'Flaherty dies at Dublin September 7 at age 88.

Poetry: The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds; An Explanation of America by Robert Pinsky; Secular Love by Michael Ondaatje.

Poet laureate Sir John Betjeman dies at Trebetherick, Cornwall, May 19 at age 77; George Oppen of Alzheimer's disease at Sunnyvale, Calif., July 7 at age 76; poet-artist Henri Michaux at Paris October 17 at age 85; May Swenson at Ocean View, Del., December 4 at age 65; Nobel poet Vicente Aleixandre at Madrid December 14 at age 86.

Juvenile: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend follows its hero past his 16th birthday; Unclaimed Treasures by Patricia MacLachlan; Prince Sparrow, Roll Over!, and The Room by Mordichai Gerstein.