42 1991 novels

Absolution is a novel by Olaf Olafsson about the mind of a man haunted by the crime he planned half a century earlier.

An Act of Terror is a novel by Andre Brink, first published in 1991.

The Alamut series consists of the two fantasy books Alamut and The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr. The series is set in the same universe as The Hound and the Falcon, which was written first, but the Alamut series describes events which occurred before the events in The Hound and the Falcon.

All the Weyrs of Pern is a science fiction novel by the American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey. Published in 1991, it was the eleventh book published in the Dragonriders of Pern series.

The Blinding Order is a short novel written by Ismail Kadare in 1984 and published in 1991, shortly after the collapse of the hoxhaist regime in Albania. Set in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, The Blinding Order is a parable about the use of terror by authoritarian regimes, and it is linked through its main subplot to the author's banned 1981 novel The Palace of Dreams.

Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (1991) is a fantasy novel by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.

By the Sword is the name of a 1991 fantasy novel by Mercedes Lackey. This is a stand-alone novel which connects the Vows & Honor series to the Valdemar Saga; it introduces the character Kerowyn and fills in what had been some gaps in the series.

Changes: a Love Story is a 1991 novel by Ama Ata Aidoo, chronicling a period of the life of a career-centred Ghanaian woman as she divorces her first husband and marries into a polygamist union. It was published by the Feminist Press.

Divina Trace (1991) is an experimental novel by Robert Antoni, and the winner of the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first novel. It tells the story of the fictional island-nation of Corpus Christi coming into its own identity. The central narrator, Johnny Domingo, relays the story of the mysterious Magdalena and her frog child, as he hears it from seven different narrators, each speaking their own distinctly Caribbean dialect. It utilizes drawings, pictures, and even a mirror.

Educated Youth is a 1991 Chinese novel by Ye Xin. It was translated to English by Jing Han in 2016.

Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä is a 1991 Finnish novel by Arto Paasilinna, While farcical throughout, from the title's twist on the original saying onwards, it has a somewhat elegiac mood, with a constant undercurrent of tragedy leavened by humor. A film adaptation of the novel by Ere Kokkonen was released in 1996. The film features many well-known Finnish actors, including Santeri Kinnunen as Seppo Sorjonen and Liisa Roine as a waitress at the Hotel Tammer.

The Following Story is a 1991 novel by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom. It portrays a former teacher of classical languages, turned writer of travel guides, who has a mysterious experience in which he wakes up in a different city from where he fell asleep.

Gagamba, subtitled The Spider Man, is a novel by award-winning and most widely translated Filipino author F. Sionil José. The novel is about a Filipino male cripple nicknamed “Gagamba”, a vendor of sweepstakes tickets in Ermita, Manila. After being buried in the wreckage, the seller survives an earthquake, together with two other fortunate characters, that occurred in the Philippines in the middle of July 1990. The novel simultaneously raised a “fundamental question” about the meaning of life and offers one “rational answer”.

The Gardens of Light is a 1991 novel by the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf. It focuses on the Parthian religious thinker Mani, founder of Manichaeism.

The General Is Up is a "novel set in modern Africa" by Peter Nazareth. Its story is based on the expulsion of Asians from Idi Amin's Uganda in the 1970s. It is set, in large part, among the expatriate community of Goans, which has had a large number of out-migrants scattered across the globe, including in Uganda, East Africa. It was published by the Calcutta (Kolkata)-based Writer's Workshop in 1984 and re-published by TSAR Publications, Toronto in 1991.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. A fictional re-telling of Jesus Christ's life, depicting him as a flawed, humanised character with passions and doubts. The novel proved controversial, especially among the Roman Catholic Church, accusing Saramago of having a "substantially anti-religious vision". It was praised by other critics as a "deeply philosophical, provocative and compelling work".

The Grass Crown is the second historical novel in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, published in 1991.

The Infinite Plan is a 1991 novel by Isabel Allende. The novel follows the protagonist, North American Greg Reeves through fives decades of his life, as he rises from a childhood in LA, through the Vietnam war and finally later life crisises. The first printing of the novel in English had 100,000 copies. The Los Angeles Times compared the novel to works by Bryce Courtenay, Ayn Rand, and James T. Farrell.

The Inscrutable Americans is a 1991 novel by Anurag Mathur. Tri-Color Communications adapted the book into a film in 1999.

The Last Camel Died at Noon is the sixth in a series of historical mystery novels, written by Elizabeth Peters and featuring fictional sleuth and archaeologist Amelia Peabody. Although most of the Amelia Peabody series are fairly "hardboiled" historical detective stories, Last Camel is an exception and satirizes adventure novels in the tradition of Henry Rider Haggard. The title of this book is identical to the first sentence of the 1981 thriller The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett. The Last Camel Died at Noon most closely follows the tradition with plot elements like a lost and ancient civilization, a young English girl serving as its high priestess, an evil prince, a wronged noble prince who wants to free the slaves, kidnappings, escapes, mazes of tunnels hand-carved from cliffs.

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991) is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. This semi-autobiographical story takes place in the autumn as the author sails his boat down the Hudson River. Phaedrus, the author's alter ego, is jarred out of his solitary routine by an encounter with Lila, a straightforward but troubled woman who is nearing a mental breakdown.

Little Pilgrim is a novel by the South Korean writer Ko Un. It is based on the character Sudhana from the Avatamsaka Sutra, and the narrative consists of 53 encounters between the boy and various teachers. Ko began to have the chapters published in 1969, and the finished work was first published in book form in 1991. It was published in English in 2005.

Onder de korenmaat is a novel by Dutch author Maarten 't Hart. It was first published in 1991.

Outside the Dog Museum is a novel by the American writer Jonathan Carroll, published in 1991. It tells the story of Harry Radcliffe, a successful architect commissioned to design a Dog Museum for the wealthy Sultan of Saru. In the process, he finds a magical new world.

The Pixilated Peeress is a fantasy novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp. It is the second book in their sequence of two Neo-Napolitanian novels, following The Incorporated Knight. It was first published in hardcover by Del Rey Books in August 1991, and in paperback by the same publisher in September 1992. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form.

Jacqueline Harpman was a Belgian writer who wrote in French.

The Polish Rider is a Spanish novel by Antonio Muñoz Molina, published in 1991. The plot revolves around a man just about to enter mid-age reconstructing his family past, all cast against the background of a small Andalusian town. In terms of structure the narrative is non-linear; the book is a patchy structure of numerous episodes from 1870 to 1991, referred from different perspectives and in non-chronological order. In terms of style the novel is viewed as multi-genre exercise, which combines elements of detective fiction, heroic sonnet, feuilleton, realist novel, Doppelgänger, adventure story, generational saga, Bildungsroman and Gothic prose. In terms of major themes it is usually viewed as a discourse upon relationship between identity and memory, either in case of an individual or in case of the collective Spanish self. Upon release the novel was highly valued by both critics and readers; the novel earned Premio Planeta for 1991 and topped the Spanish weekly list of best selling novels from November 1991 till February 1992. In some rankings compiled today it appears among the best Spanish-language novels of the last few decades.

Red Iron Nights is a fantasy novel by American writer Glen Cook, the sixth novel in his ongoing Garrett P.I. series. The series combines elements of mystery and fantasy as it follows the adventures of private investigator Garrett.

Requiem: A Hallucination is a 1991 novel by the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi. Set in Lisbon, the narrative centres on an Italian author who meets the spirit of a dead Portuguese poet. Tabucchi wrote the book in Portuguese. Alain Tanner directed a 1998 film adaptation, also called Requiem.

Ring is a Japanese mystery horror novel by Koji Suzuki first published in 1991, and set in modern-day Japan. The novel was the first in the Ring novel series, and the first of a trilogy, along with two sequels: Spiral (1995) and Loop (1998). The original Ring novel sold 500,000 copies by January 1998, and 1.5 million copies by July 2000. Ring was the basis for the Ring franchise, including a 1995 television film, a 1998 theatrical film of the same name (Ring), a television series, and two international film remakes of the 1998 film: a South Korean version and an American version.

Rivers of Babylon is a 1991 thriller novel by Peter Pišťanek.

Slayers is a Japanese light novel series written by Hajime Kanzaka and illustrated by Rui Araizumi. The novels have been serialized in Dragon Magazine since 1989, before being published into individual volumes. They follow the adventures of teenage sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions as they journey through their world. Using powerful magic and swordsmanship they battle overreaching wizards, demons seeking to destroy the world, and an occasional hapless gang of bandits.

Sophie's World is a 1991 novel by Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder. It follows Sophie Amundsen, a Norwegian teenager who is introduced to the history of philosophy by Alberto Knox, a middle-aged philosopher.

Starry Nights is Shobha De's second novel. It is said that the novels' characters, Aasha Rani and her lover Akshay, were based on the real life love-affairs of Amitabh Bachchan with Rekha Ganesan and Dharmendra Singh Deol with Hema Malini. It was a best seller in India and cemented its authors reputation as being a provocative and daring author.

Summer of Night is the first in a series of horror novels by American writer Dan Simmons, published in 1991 by Warner Aspect. It was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 1992. The subsequent books are Children of the Night (1992), Fires of Eden (1994), and A Winter Haunting (2002).

The Swords of Zinjaban is a science fiction novel written by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, the eleventh book of the former's Viagens Interplanetarias series and the eighth of its subseries of stories set on the fictional planet Krishna. Chronologically it is the eighth Krishna novel as well. It was first published in paperback by Baen Books in February 1991. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form.

Tandia is Bryce Courtenay's 1991 sequel to his own best-selling novel The Power of One. It follows the story of a young woman, Tandia, who was brutally raped and then banished from her own home. Tandia later meets up with Peekay, the protagonist from The Power of One and their stories continue on together.

Tatham Mound is a 1991 fantasy-historical novel written by Piers Anthony. The story tells of Throat Shot, a member of the Floridian Toco tribe, and his quest to prevent an unknown danger from harming his people. The story was inspired by finds at Tatham Mound, located near the Withlacoochee River in Citrus County, Florida.

Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel is a book by Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller. It was first published in 1991 after Müller's emigration to Germany and is cited in 2010's History of the Literary Cultures of East Central Europe, along with Traveling on One Leg and The Land of Green Plums, as drawing attention to her work in the West. Titled for a cautionary proverb which Müller's grandmother used to say to her—a warning against a variety of evils including vanity, sexual self-awareness and self-reflection in general, each of which could precede a fall, the book is a collection of essays about writing and literature built around the theme.

The Cursed and Killed is a novel by Viktor Astafyev, written in the second half of the 1990s. The plot of the novel is partly based on the author's participation in the fighting in the 21st reserve rifle regiment and their crossing of the Dnieper.

Vanajan Joanna is a historical novel by Finnish author Kaari Utrio.

WLT: A Radio Romance is a 1991 novel by Garrison Keillor. The book reached the top ten of The New York Times Best Seller list in 1991.