20th Century in Literature - Cold War Period 1960-1989

Cold War Period 1960-1989

1960

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (USA)
• The London Trilogy by Colin MacInnes (England) - first volume, Absolute Beginners, published in 1957
• Cain's Book by Alexander Trocchi (UK, France, USA)
• This Sporting Life by David Storey (UK)
• A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
• Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras (France)
• The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark (Scotland)
• The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller (USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1949
• The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (USA)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (France) - the 1960s obsession with the occult starts here. Published in English 1963
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr. (USA)

1961

• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (USA)
• A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad, England)
• Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
• Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh - trilogy, first volume published in 1952
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (USA)
• Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous

Genre fiction

• Solaris by Stanisław Lem (Poland)
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (USA)
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (USA)

1962

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia)
• A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess
• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
• Island by Aldous Huxley
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, England)
• The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
• The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell - first volume published 1957
• Big Sur by Jack Kerouac - the last of the Lost Generation at the end of the Beat Generation

Genre fiction

• The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton (England) - first of the Harry Palmer novels

Non-fiction

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (USA) - the first major popular study on the deterioration of the environment

1963

• V. by Thomas Pynchon (USA)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (USA, England)
• The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (USA)
• The Collector by John Fowles (England)
• The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (England)
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)

Genre fiction

• Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (France)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (England)
• The Grifters by Jim Thompson

Non-fiction

• The Truce by Primo Levi)

1964

• Herzog by Saul Bellow
• A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby (USA)
• The Spire by William Golding (England)
• Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess

Genre fiction

• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (USA)
• Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (USA)

Non-fiction

• Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (Canada)

1965

• The Magus by John Fowles
• The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
• Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino (Italy)
• The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (Poland, USA)
• Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush by Hunter Davies (England) - the kitchen sink novel mutates into the swinging 1960s novel

Plays

• Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss (Germany, Sweden)

Poetry

• Briggflatts by Basil Bunting

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe (USA)
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley (USA)

1966

• A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
• Alfie by Bill Naughton (England)
• The Comedians by Graham Greene
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess

Genre fiction

• Pavane by Keith Roberts (England)
• The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson (USA)
• Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Fariña (USA)

1967

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan (India)
• Poor Cow by Nell Dunn (England)
• A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Non-fiction

• The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

1968

• Cocksure by Mordecai Richler (Canada)
• Couples by John Updike (USA)
• The Public Image by Muriel Spark
• Lunar Caustic by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
• The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer
• Bomb Culture by Jeff Nuttall (England)
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (USA)
• The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda (USA)

1969

• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
• The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
• A Void by Georges Perec (France)
• Passacaille by Robert Pinget (France)
• Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous

Genre fiction

• Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss
• The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock (England, USA)
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo (Italy)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• Papillon by Henri Charrière (France)
• The View Over Atlantis by John Michell (England)

1970

• Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
• Mr Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
• October Ferry to Gabriola by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous

Genre fiction

• The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake (USA)
• Deliverance by James Dickey (USA)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (Australia, England)
• Groupie by Jenny Fabian (England)
• Playpower by Richard Neville (Australia, England)
• Revolt into Style by George Melly (England)
• Soledad Brother by George Jackson (USA) - prison letters
• Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (USA)

1971

• In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad, England)
• M/F by Anthony Burgess
• Our Gang by Philip Roth
• The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (USA)
• Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (USA)
• Being There by Jerzy Kosinski

Genre fiction

• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (England)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander (Indonesia, Netherlands)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

1972

• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter (England)
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• G by John Berger (England, France)
• The Good for Nothing by Oguz Atay (Turkey)

Genre fiction

• The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (USA)
• Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach (USA)
• The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth

Poetry

• Crossing the Water and Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath

1973

• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Crash by J. G. Ballard (England)
• Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
• Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia, France)
• Sweet Dreams by Michael Frayn (England)
• Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (USA)
• The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

Genre fiction

• Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

1974

• The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
• The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle (USA)
• The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll
• Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess
• Myra Breckinridge and Myron by Gore Vidal - first of pair published in 1968

Genre fiction

• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
• Fletch by Gregory McDonald (USA)

Genre fiction

• Jaws by Peter Benchley (USA)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (USA)

1975

• Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies - first volume published 1970
• Dead Babies by Martin Amis (England)
• The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury (England)
• The Periodic Table by Primo Levi - short stories

Genre fiction

• Watership Down by Richard Adams (England)
• The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh (USA)
• Shōgun by James Clavell (England, USA)
• Salem's Lot by Stephen King (USA)

1976

• Ragtime by EL Doctorow (USA)

Genre fiction

• Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice (USA)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• Roots by Alex Haley

Drama

• Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka

1977

• The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký (Czechoslovakia)
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (USA)

1978

• Success by Martin Amis
• The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
• Lanark by Alasdair Gray (Scotland)
• Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
• Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis
• The World According to Garp by John Irving (USA)
• 1985 by Anthony Burgess
• Horatio Stubbs by Brian Aldiss - trilogy, first volume published in 1970

Genre fiction

• Rumpole of the Bailey by John Mortimer (England)

1979

• A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
• The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard
• Sophie's Choice by William Styron (USA)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

• The White Album by Joan Didion
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (USA)

1980

• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Pascali's Island by Barry Unsworth (England)
• Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

1981

• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (India, UK)
• The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (England)
• The White Hotel by DM Thomas (England)
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (USA) - short stories

Genre fiction

• The Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (USA)
• Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (England, Russia)

1982

• Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (Australia)
• An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd (Ghana, Scotland)
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker (USA)
• A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Genre fiction

• Prizzi's Honor by Richard Condon

1983

• Waterland by Graham Swift (England)
• Shame by Salman Rushdie

1984

• Money by Martin Amis
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (USA)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (England)
• Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
• Enderby by Anthony Burgess - tetrology, first volume published in 1963
• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

Non-fiction

• Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard

1985

• White Noise by Don DeLillo (USA)
• Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (USA)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (England)
• The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (USA)
• Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (England)
• Illywhacker by Peter Carey (Australia)
• The Kingdom of the Wicked by Anthony Burgess

Genre fiction

• L.A. Noir by James Ellroy (USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1984
• "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood - (USA

1986

• Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz (USA)
• The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
• An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan, UK)
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canada)

Non-fiction

• Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

1987

• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe

Genre fiction

• Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (USA)

1988

• Mother London by Michael Moorcock
• Libra by Don DeLillo
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (Australia)
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Genre fiction

• Sprawl by William Gibson (Canada, USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1984

1989

• London Fields by Martin Amis
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding - trilogy, first volume published 1980
• The Book of Evidence by John Banville (Ireland)
• The Trick of It by Michael Frayn