1957–61
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Fiction reviewer for the New Statesman. The Mystic Masseur (1957, wins John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); The Suffrage of Elvira (1958); Miguel Street (1959, wins Somerset Maugham Award).
1957
LITERARY CONTEXT: Kerouac: On the Road.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Civil Rights Act in US. European Economic Community founded.
1958
LITERARY CONTEXT: Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago.
Achebe: Things Fall Apart.
1959
LITERARY CONTEXT: Burroughs: Naked Lunch.
Bellow: Henderson the Rain King.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Castro seizes power in Cuba.
1960
LITERARY CONTEXT: Updike: Rabbit, Run.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Sixty-seven demonstrators killed at Sharpeville, South Africa. Belgian Congo becomes independent.
1961
AUTHOR’S LIFE: A House for Mr Biswas.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Heller: Catch-22.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: John F. Kennedy elected US President. Erection of Berlin Wall. South Africa excluded from Commonwealth. ANC banned. Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space.
1962
AUTHOR’S LIFE: The Middle Passage.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Nabokov: Pale Fire.
Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Cuban missile crisis. Trinidad and Tobago become independent within the British Commonwealth. Commonwealth Immigrants Act. Algeria granted independence by France.
1963
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Assassination of John F. Kennedy.
1964
AUTHOR’S LIFE: An Area of Darkness.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Khrushchev deposed and replaced by Brezhnev.
1965
HISTORICAL EVENTS: India — Pakistan war.
1966
LITERARY CONTEXT: Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Mao launches Cultural Revolution in China. Indira Gandhi becomes Prime Minster of India.
1967
AUTHOR’S LIFE: A Flag on the Island: The Mimic Men.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Arab — Israeli Six-Day War. Civil war in Nigeria (Biafra).
1968
LITERARY CONTEXT: Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Student unrest in US and throughout Europe. Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Assassination of Martin Luther King. Nixon US President.
1969
AUTHOR’S LIFE: The Loss of El Dorado.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Resignation of de Gaulle in France. Americans land first man on the moon.
1970
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Black Power revolt in Trinidad.
1971
AUTHOR’S LIFE: In a Free State. (Wins Booker Prize.)
LITERARY CONTEXT: Updike: Rabbit Redux.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Formation of Bangladesh.
1972
AUTHOR’S LIFE: The Overcrowded Barracoon.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: President Amin expels Asians from Uganda. First Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
1973
LITERARY CONTEXT: Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow.
Greene: The Honorary Consul.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Arab — Israeli War.
1974
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Resignation of Nixon following Watergate scandal.
1975
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Guerrillas.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Levi: The Periodic Table.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: End of Vietnam War; exodus of the ‘Boat People’ begins. State of Emergency declared in India (to 1977). Guerrilla armies come to power in Angola and Mozambique. USSR and Western powers sign Helsinki Agreement.
1976
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Trinidad and Tobago become an independent republic.
1977
AUTHOR’S LIFE: India: A Wounded Civilization.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Morrison: Song of Solomon.
1979
AUTHOR’S LIFE: A Bend in the River.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Calvino: If on a winter’s night a traveler.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Margaret Thatcher first woman Prime Minister in UK.Carter and Brezhnev sign SALT-2 arms limitation treaty. Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Iranian revolution; American hostage crisis.
1980
AUTHOR’S LIFE: The Return of Eva Péron (with The Killings in Trinidad).
LITERARY CONTEXT: Burgess: Earthly Powers.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: An independent Zimbabwe formed.
1981
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Among the Believers.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Rushdie: Midnight’s Children.
1982
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Falklands War.
1983
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Honorary Fellow, University College, Oxford.
LITERARY CONTEXT: Narayan: A Tiger for Malgudi.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Reagan proposes ‘Star Wars’.
1984
AUTHOR’S LIFE: Finding the Centre.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Famine in Ethiopia. Indira Gandhi assassinated.
1985
LITERARY CONTEXT: Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera.
HISTORICAL EVENTS: Riots in South Africa. Gorbachev General Secretary in USSR.
1986
LITERARY CONTEXT: Walcott: Collected Poems.