Literary delights and delicacies of 1988 at a glance!

1988 | In Literature 

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