2015 in literature explained

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2015.

Events

January 7 – Charlie Hebdo shooting: An attack on the leading Franch satirical weekly kills 12 and wounds 11. This week's cover features Michel Houellebecq, whose novel Submission is published that day.
January 21 – The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launches a six-part television miniseries of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.^[1]
March 8 – The BBC launches a new television series of Winston Graham's Poldark novels.^[2] ^[3]
March 10 – Jacek Dukaj's cyberpunk novel The Old Axolotl is published in its original Polish version as Polish: Starość aksolotla as purely electronic literature including hypertext and 3D printable character models.
March 19 – Kim Thúy's novel Ru wins the 2015 edition of Canada Reads.^[4]
July 7 – Jeff Lindsay releases his final novel in the "Dexter" series, writing off Dexter Morgan two years after the final episode in the television series.^[5]
c. October 14 – Start of Causeway Bay Books disappearances: Five staff of the political bookseller Causeway Bay Books in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, go missing, apparently detained by mainland Chinese authorities.
November 10 – The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford acquires its twelve millionth book, a unique copy of Shelley's subversive Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things "by a Gentleman of the University of Oxford", published in 1811.^[6]
November 25 – Singapore's Media Development Authority lifts prohibitions on 240 publications under the Undesirable Publications Act.^[7]
unknown date – English author Iain Pears' novel Arcadia is accompanied as an electronic book by an interactive app allowing readers to switch between multiple narratives.^[8]

Anniversaries

January 4 – 50th anniversary of the death of Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot
April 23 – Centenary of the death of English poet Rupert Brooke, on active service
June – Centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
June 10 – Centenary of Saul Bellow's birth
June 13 – 150th anniversary of W. B. Yeats, who was born on this date in 1865^[9]
September 26 – 75th anniversary of his death of Walter Benjamin
October – Centenary of the publication of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung).
November 26 – 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland^[10]
October 21 – 75th anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
December 21 – 75th anniversary of the death of American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald
December 23 – Bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen's Emma

New books

The date in brackets after a title refers to U.S. publication unless otherwise stated.

Fiction

Rabai al-Madhoun – Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust and the Naqba
André Alexis – Fifteen Dogs
Isabel Allende – El amante japonés^[11]
Claudia Amengual – Cartagena (April 28)
Margaret Atwood – The Heart Goes Last
Leigh Bardugo – Six of Crows
Paul Beatty – The Sellout (March 3)
Pierce Brown – Golden Son (January 6)
Graeme Macrae Burnet – His Bloody Project (UK, November 6)^[12]
Mark Z. Danielewski
- (May 12)
- (Oct 27)
Mathias Énard – Boussole (Compass)
Raymond Carver – Beginners (September 15)
Anne Enright – The Green Road
Jonathan Franzen – Purity (September 1)
Paula Hawkins – The Girl on the Train (January 13)
Lawrence Hill – The Illegal
Michel Houellebecq - Submission (France, January 7)
John Irving – Avenue of Mysteries (November 3)
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Giant (March 3)
Miranda July – The First Bad Man (January 13)^[13]
Stephen King
- Finders Keepers (June 2)
- The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (November 3)
Harper Lee – Go Set a Watchman (July 14; written c.1955)
Sarah J. Maas – A Court of Thorns and Roses
Michael Livingston – The Shards of Heaven (November 24)
Tom McCarthy – Satin Island (UK)
Ian McDonald – (September 17)
Lisa McInerney – The Glorious Heresies (April)^[14]
Henning Mankell (d. October 15) – Swedish: Svenska gummistövlar (Sweden; translated as After the Fire, 2017)
Toni Morrison – God Help the Child (April 21)
Ottessa Moshfegh – Eileen (August)
Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) – Wind/Pinball: Two Novels (August 4)
Viet Thanh Nguyen – The Sympathizer
Chigozie Obioma – The Fishermen
Max Porter – Grief is the Thing with Feathers (UK, September 17)
Orhan Pamuk – A Strangeness in My Mind (October 20)
Sunjeev Sahota – The Year of the Runaways (UK, June)
John Scalzi – The End of All Things (August 11)
Roger Scruton – The Disappeared (March 5)
Joss Sheldon – Occupied (UK, October 20)
Neal Stephenson – Seveneves (May 19)
Anne Tyler – A Spool of Blue Thread
Guy Vanderhaeghe – Daddy Lenin and Other Stories
Sarai Walker – Dietland (May 26)
Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life

Children and young people

Kevan Atteberry – Bunnies!!!
Bob Barner - Sea Bones
Janeen Brian - I’m A Hungry Dinosaur
Sarah Crossan – One (verse, UK, August 27)
Brian Falkner -
Nadia Fink (illustrated by Pitu Saá) – Frida Kahlo for Girls and Boys (Frida Kahlo para chicas y chicos) (Argentina, June, first in Anti-Princess Series (Colección antiprincesas))
Peter Goes – Timeline
Jane Godwin – The True Story of Mary
Frances Hardinge – The Lie Tree (UK, May 7)
Moriah McStay - Everything That Makes You
Carol Morley – 7 Miles Out
Barry Moser – We Were Brothers
Lesléa Newman - Ketzel, the Cat who Composed
Jerry Pinkney - The Grasshopper & the Ants
Rick Riordan
- Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes (August 18)
- The Sword of Summer (October 6)
R. A. Spratt - Friday Barnes, Under Suspicion
Yasmine Surovec – My Pet Human

Poetry

Drama

Annie Baker – John
David Hare – The Moderate Soprano
Lynn Nottage – Sweat
Tom Stoppard – The Hard Problem (UK, February 5)

Non-fiction

Elizabeth Alexander – The Light of the World: A Memoir
Björk – Archives
Carrie Brownstein – Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl
Noam Chomsky – Because We Say So
Kate Christensen -
Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips – The Misfit Economy
Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me (July)
Isaac Deutscher – The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky
Kim Gordon – Girl in a Band
Greg Grandin – Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman
Chris Hedges – Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
Tameka Hobbs - Democracy Abroad, Lynching At Home
Robert Hughes – The Spectacle of Skill: Selected Writings (November 17)
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne - Blue Ocean Strategy (expanded edition)
B. B. Lal – The Rigvedic People: Invaders? Immigrants? or Indigenous?
Zachary Leader – The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964
Mark Levin – Plunder and Deceit
Bethany McLean – Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants
Alberto Manguel – Curiosity (literary criticism)
John Marenbon – Pagans and Philosophers (March 22)
Minae Mizumura (translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter) – The Fall of Language in the Age of English
Maggie Nelson – The Argonauts
Jay Parini – Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal
Marilynne Robinson – The Givenness of Things: Essays (October 27)
Oliver Sacks – Gratitude
Ruth Scurr – John Aubrey: My Own Life
James Shapiro – The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
Steve Silberman – The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Aaron Swartz – The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz (November 26, UK)^[15]
Edmund de Waal – The White Road. A Pilgrimage of Sorts (porcelain)
Jim Wallis – America's Original Sin
Rainn Wilson - The Bassoon King

Films

The Danish Girl

Deaths

January 1 – Miller Williams, American poet, 84 (born 1930)^[16] ^[17]
January 4 – Michele Serros, American novelist, poet, and staff writer, 48 (born 1966)^[18] ^[19]
January 10 – Robert Stone, American novelist, 77 (born 1937)^[20]
January 12 – John Bayley, novelist and critic, 89 (born 1925)^[21]
January 25 – John Leggett, American author and academic, 97 (born 1917)
January 27 – Suzette Haden Elgin, American linguist and science fiction author, 78 (born 1936)^[22]
January 28 – Lionel Gilbert, Australian historian, author, and academic, 90 (born 1924)^[23]
January 29 – Colleen McCullough, Australian author, 77 (born 1937)^[24]
February 6
- André Brink, South African novelist and professor of literature, (born 1935)
- Assia Djebar, Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker, (born 1936)
February 13 – Faith Bandler, Australian author and civil rights activist, 96 (born 1918)^[25]
February 14 – Philip Levine, American poet laureate, 87 (born 1928)^[26] ^[27]
February 23 – James Aldridge, Australian-born British novelist and journalist, 96 (born 1918)^[28]
February 26
- Fritz J. Raddatz, German feuilleton writer, essayist and biographer (suicide, born 1931)^[29]
- Avijit Roy, Bangladeshi-American writer, 42 (stabbed, born 1972)^[30]
February 28 – Yaşar Kemal, Turkish writer and intellectual (born 1923)
March 12 – Sir Terry Pratchett, English author of fantasy novels, 66 (posterior cortical atrophy, born 1948)^[31]
March 18 – Grace Ogot, Kenyan writer, 84 (born 1930)
March 24 – Alan Seymour, Australian playwright, 87 (born 1927)^[32]
March 26 – Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet, translator, and Nobel prizewinner, 83 (born 1931)^[33] ^[34]
April 9 – Ivan Doig, American novelist, 75 (born 1939).^[35]
April 13
- Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist, 74 (lung cancer, born 1940)
- Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, and Nobel prizewinner, 87 (lung infection, born 1927)^[36]
April 15 – Rosemary Tonks, English poet and novelist, 85 (born 1928)^[37]
May 2 – Ruth Rendell, English crime and thriller writer, 85 (born 1930)^[38]
May 2 – William Zinsser American journalist and critic (born 1922)^[39]
May 20 – J. S. Harry, Australian poet, 76 (born 1939)^[40]
May 23 – Moyra Caldecott, English writer, 87 (born 1927)^[41]
June 19 – James Salter, American novelist and short-story writer, 90 (born 1925)^[42] ^[43]
July 21 – E. L. Doctorow, American novelist, 84 (born 1931)^[44]
July 31 – Alan Cheuse, American writer and radio reviewer, 75 (born 1940)
August 30 – Oliver Sacks, British neurologist and author (Awakenings), 82 (born 1933)^[45] ^[46]
October 2 – Brian Friel, Irish playwright and short-story writer, 86 (born 1929)^[47]
October 5 – Henning Mankell, Swedish novelist, children’s author and playwright, 67 (born 1948)
October 7 – W. R. Mitchell, English journalist and author, 87 (born 1928)^[48]
October 18
- Gamal El-Ghitani, Egyptian novelist and cultural critic, 70 (born 1945)^[49]
- Paul West, English-born American novelist, poet and essayist, 85 (born 1930)^[50]
October 27 – Mitzura Arghezi, Romanian book editor, illustrator, and politician (born 1924)
November 30

- Dan Fante, American author and playwright, 71 (born 1944)
- Hazel Holt, English novelist, 87 (born 1928)
November 30 – Fatema Mernissi, Moroccan scholar and writer, 75 (born 1940)^[51]
December 5 – William McIlvanney, Scottish novelist, short-story writer and poet, 79 (born 1936)
December 9 – Akiyuki Nosaka, Japanese writer (Grave of the Fireflies), 85 (born 1930)
December 16 - Peter Dickinson, English author and poet (born 1927)