The year 1988 has proved to be a very productive
year in terms of its literary output, be it in the realms of the novel, or prose,
or poetry, or criticism, or on theory!
Indeed, just a cursory glance at the plethora of
‘literary delicacies’ that are available for avid bibliophiles of all hues
during this year, one could only be wonder-amazed at their immense variety,
their diversity and their heterogeneity.
This post intends to highlight a few of the
important literary accomplishments of the year 1988! This said, however, the
list for 1988 is by no means exhaustive at all! Readers could always look up an
authentic encyclopedia, to watch out for more literary delicacies that happened
this particular year!
To begin with, it was in the year 1988 that Czech-born
French writer Milan Kundera’s The Art of
the Novel was published.
Well, Milan Kundera’s name and fame rests on his
amazing literary feats, some of which have been discussed in our past posts
HERE and HERE.
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer winner Toni
Morrison’s novel Beloved was also
published this year, in 1988.
Australian novelist Peter Carey’s famed novel
titled Oscar and Lucinda, was
awarded the Booker Prize this year in 1988. In fact, he also has the added
honour of being one of the four writers to have won the Booker Prize two times!
(A prospective contender for the Nobel too!)
Pakistani novelist of Gujarati Parsi descent,
who is now settled in the US, Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel titled, Ice-Candy Man, based on the partition of Indian Sub-continent, was
also published this year, in 1988.
Eminent Italian novelist, semiotician and professor Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum was also published this year, in 1988.
Booker winner, Salman Rushdie’s highly
controversial fourth novel titled, The
Satanic Verses was also published this year, in 1988.
Eminent Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo
Ishiguro’s novel titled, The Remains of
the Day and popular British novelist Roald Dahl’s Matilda were also published this very year, in 1988.
Famed Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was also published this
year, in 1988.
Renowned Professor of English and Comparative
Literature, Jonathan D. Culler’s Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its
Institutions was published this self-same year, in 1988.
Gayatri Spivak gave academia three of her famous
texts on this particular year, namely,
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural
Politics,
Selected
Subaltern Studies (ed.,)
and finally her most popular essay, titled, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’
all three of which happened this year, in 1988.
1988 also has another literary honour to its cap, as it was on this momentous year that, one of Egypt’s all-time popular
literary figures - novelist and playwright Naguib
Mahfouz - who is credited with modernizing Arabic literature - was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature!
To be continued…
images: amazondotcom
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