Calendar

The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.

1990 Literary Facts

Charles Simic receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The World Doesn’t End

Michel Tremblay publishes Le Train

Derek Walcott publishes Omeros

August Wilson publishes The Piano Lesson

John Updike publishes Rabbit at Rest

Octavio Paz receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

Mona Van Duyn publishes Near Changes: Poems

Mordecai Richler receives the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Solomon Gursky Was Here

Patricia Cornwell publishes Postmortem

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)

Walter Mosley introduces his fictional detective Easy Rawlins in the novel Devil in a Blue Dress

South African Black Nationalist Nelson Mandela is freed from prison after 27 years of confinement

Explore: Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela: A Biography, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Josephine W. Johnson dies

Walker Percy dies

Explore: The Moviegoer, The Second Coming, Walker Percy

Irving Wallace dies

Explore: The Fan Club, The Miracle, The Prize, Irving Wallace

Norman MacLean dies

Explore: A River Runs Through It, Young Men and Fire

B. F. Skinner dies

Explore: B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Thomas McGrath dies

Explore: Thomas McGrath, Ode for the American Dead in Asia

Alberto Pincherle dies

Explore: The Time of Indifference, Alberto Moravia

Patrick White dies

Explore: The Solid Mandala, Voss, The Ham Funeral, Patrick White

Hugh MacLennan dies

Explore: Barometer Rising, Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan

Malcolm Muggeridge dies

Explore: Malcolm Muggeridge

Reinaldo Arenas dies

Explore: The Palace of the White Skunks

Friedrich Duerrenmatt dies

Explore: The Physicists, The Visit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt