1993 in literature

See also: 1992 in literature, other events of 1993, 1994 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• Professor Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, becomes the longest running book on the bestseller list of The Sunday Times.
• November 17 – Annie Proulx wins the National Book Award for her novel The Shipping News.

New books

• Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years – Sue Townsend
• Band of Brothers – Stephen Ambrose
• Barnyard Dance – Sandra Boynton
• The Christmas Box – Richard Paul Evans
• The Client  – John Grisham
• Complicity  – Iain Banks
• The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
• The Giver – Lois Lowry
• Honour Among Thieves  – Jeffrey Archer
• The Hope – Herman Wouk
• In the Eye of the Sun – Ahdaf Soueif
• Lasher  – Anne Rice
• Like Water for Chocolate  – Laura Esquivel
• Losing Eddie – Deborah Joy Corey
• Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus – John Gray
• Men at Arms – Terry Pratchett
• Moving Mars – Greg Bear
• The Night Manager – John le Carré
• Nightmares and Dreamscapes  – Stephen King
• Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale – Miranda Seymour
• Pleading Guilty  – Scott Turow
• Le Rocher de Tanios – Amin Maalouf
• The Scorpio Illusion  – Robert Ludlum
• Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree – Tariq Ali
• Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend  – Robert James Waller
• Too Big To Fail – Walter Stewart
• Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
• The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929–1939 (Antisémitisme et nationalisme d'extrême-droite dans la province de Québec 1929–1939) – Esther Delisle
• Vanished  – Danielle Steel
• Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions – Martin Amis
• The Wicca Spellbook – Gerina Dunwich
• Without Remorse  – Tom Clancy

Deaths

• January 8 – Eleanor Hibbert, better known as Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt
• January 22 – Kobo Abe, novelist and playwright
• March 9 – C. Northcote Parkinson, historian, codifier of Parkinson's Law
• April 15 – Leslie Charteris, creator of "The Saint"
• April 23 – Bertus Aafjes, Dutch poet
• June 19 – William G. Golding, novelist and poet
• August 28 – E. P. Thompson, political historian
• September 7 – Eugen Barbu, novelist, playwright and journalist
• September 16 – Oodgeroo Noonuccal, poet
• October 31 – Kashif Latif, poet, aged 17
• November 25 – Anthony Burgess, novelist
• December 4 – Margaret Landon, author of Anna and the King of Siam
• December 28 – William L. Shirer, historian

Awards

• Booker Prize: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha
• See 1993 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Nebula Award: Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Cynthia Rylant, Missing May
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Toni Morrison
• Prix Goncourt: Amin Maalouf, Le Rocher de Tanios
• Prix Décembre: René de Obaldia. Exobiographie
• Prix Médicis French: Emmanuèle Bernheim, Sa femme
• Prix Médicis International: Paul Auster, Leviathan
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Joan Brady, Theory of War