49 1981 novels

Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful is the third novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing Cry, the Beloved Country. Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful is an anti-apartheid novel, in a similar vein to Cry, the Beloved Country. It is a fictional reworking of Paton's own years working as a political activist and of the experience he gained working as the president of the Liberal Party of South Africa.

Janet Michelle "Jan" Kerouac was an American writer and the only child of beat generation author Jack Kerouac and Joan Haverty Kerouac.

Baseball Fever is a novel written by Johanna Hurwitz and published in 1981 by William Morrow and Company. It features Ezra Feldman as the protagonist, who has a depicted obsession to baseball and is primarily centered on his father and Ezra himself, who fail to compromise because Ezra prefers baseball and his father loathes baseball and prefers chess and sociology.

The Borribles Go For Broke is the second volume of the Borrible Trilogy, written by Michael de Larrabeiti and first published in 1981 by The Bodley Head in the United Kingdom.

Bougainville: Een gedenkschrift is a novel by Dutch author F. Springer. Published in 1981, it won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs in 1982. The novel is one of the author's most popular and was Springer's first big literary success. It is set in the nineteenth-century Dutch colonial past and contemporaneous Bangladesh, and is based on the experiences of the author, who grew up in the Dutch East Indies and was stationed in Bangladesh as a diplomat.

Camber the Heretic is a fantasy novel by American-born author Katherine Kurtz. It was first published by Del Rey Books in 1981. It was the sixth novel of Kurtz' Deryni novels to be published, and the third book in her second Deryni trilogy, The Legends of Camber of Culdi. The Legends trilogy serves as prequels to The Chronicles of the Deryni series that Kurtz wrote from 1970 to 1973, and it details the events that occurred two centuries before the Chronicles trilogy. Kurtz' next Deryni series to be published was The Histories of King Kelson, but the internal literary chronology of the Legends trilogy is continued in The Heirs of Saint Camber trilogy.

The Chaneysville Incident is a 1981 novel by David Bradley. The novel won the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It concerns a black historian who investigates an incident involving the death of his father and a prior incident involving the death of some 12 slaves. John, the historian, struggles to solve the mystery of his father, Moses Washington, a moonshiner with a troubled past. Imagination, hunting, death, and racial tensions all make thematic appearances in the novel. Chaneysville is in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

Chhinnamastar Abhishap is a Bengali novel by Satyajit Ray featuring private detective Feluda. It was first serialized in Desh magazine in 1978, and then released in book form in 1981 by Ananda Publishers.

"The Children's Story" is a 4,300-word novelette by James Clavell. It first appeared in Reader's Digest and was printed in book form in 1981. It was adapted by Clavell himself into a thirty minute short film for television which aired on Mobil Showcase.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981. It tells, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the Vicario twins.

The Curse of the Pharaohs is a historical mystery novel by Elizabeth Peters, the second in the Amelia Peabody series of novels; it takes place in the excavation season of 1892–93.

Death by Sheer Torture (1981), also known simply as Sheer Torture, is a mystery novel by English writer Robert Barnard, the first of five novels, penned in the 1980s, featuring his recurring detective character Perry Trethowan.

Dragonslayer is a novel by Wayland Drew published in 1981.

Ondskan is a Swedish novel by Jan Guillou.

The File on H. is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It first appeared in Albanian in 1981 under the title Dosja H.

Golem XIV is a book written by Polish author Stanisław Lem, published in 1981. It is a philosophical essay in the format of science fiction, presented as a part of the lecture course given by a superintelligent computer, Golem XIV. It contains two lectures, together with an introduction, a foreword, a memo, and an afterword, all of them being fictitious.

Mark Coffin U.S.S. is a 1979 political novel by Allen Drury which follows the titular young U.S. Senator as he navigates Washington politics. It is set in a different fictional timeline from Drury's 1959 novel Advise and Consent, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Hobgoblin is a 1981 horror novel by American writer John Coyne about Scott Gardiner, a teenaged boy who becomes obsessed with Hobgoblin, a fantasy roleplaying game based on Irish mythology, as his life in the game and in reality slowly blend.

The House Between the Worlds is a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley published in 1981.

The Howling Miller is a 1981 novel by the Finnish author Arto Paasilinna.

An Indecent Obsession is a 1981 novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough.

The Iron Theatre is a novel by Otar Chiladze, published in 1981. It revives the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century in Georgia, and explores a conflict of life and art at the edge of new millennium. The plot of the novel is a mix of historical facts, real situations and the author's fantasy. The author frequently breaks the chronological order, to empower the reader to imagine the different situations and events from the different points of view and therefore creates a complete picture of the world that he wants to represent. The novel gained Shota Rustaveli State Prize back in 1983.

The Island on Bird Street is a 1981 semi-autobiographical children's book by Israeli author Uri Orlev, which tells the story of a young boy, Alex, and his struggle to survive alone in a ghetto during World War II. The author won the 1996 Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's literature, largely for this book, which was translated into numerous languages and adapted into a play and a film.

Kepler is a novel by John Banville, first published in 1981.

Inoue Hisashi was a leading Japanese playwright and writer of comic fiction. From 1961 to 1986, he used the pen name of Uchiyama Hisashi.

Jo Jung-Rae is a novelist from South Korea, who is the author of the best selling novels Taebaek Mountain Range, Arirang, and Han River'

The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno is a biographical novel detailing the life of American Mafia member Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno. It chronicles Fratianno's life from his childhood in Cleveland to becoming the acting Boss of the Los Angeles crime family. Author Ovid Demaris gained the information for the book from Fratianno himself in the early 1980s, where they spent hours recording the pair's conversations. Demaris also conducted his own research. The book was released on January 13, 1980 by Crown Publishing. It was the first of two biographical books written about Fratianno; the other is Vengeance is Mine (1987) by Michael J. Zuckerman.

The Mahdi is a 1981 thriller novel by Philip Nicholson, writing as A. J. Quinnell. The book was published in 1981 by Macmillan in the UK then in January 1982 by William Morrow & Co in the US and deals with political power struggles over a presumed Muslim prophet.

Max and the Cats is a 1981 novella by Brazilian writer and physician Moacyr Scliar. It was first published in Portuguese, then published in English in 1990. It tells the story of Max Schmidt, born in Berlin in 1912, who comes of age just before the Nazis take power. After offending them by having an affair with a married woman, Max is forced to flee the country. He ends up on a ship bound for Brazil that sinks as part of an insurance scam and finds himself trapped in a dinghy with a jaguar—one of a number of zoo animals caged in the hold—but after being rescued and making a life for himself in Brazil continues to find his German past impossible to escape.

Maynard's House is a horror novel by Herman Raucher. The book is the story of a young Vietnam War veteran, Austin, suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder who learns that his best friend, the eponymous Maynard, has been killed in combat; in his will, Maynard leaves the narrator his house, a historical site in which a woman accused of witchcraft was killed around the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Austin moves into the house, and shortly thereafter is trapped when an unexpectedly strong winter storm sweeps in. Isolated in the home, the narrator begins to try to come to terms with the trauma of the things he witnessed in combat, and grows increasingly paranoid that the home might be haunted by the murdered witch.

Mute is a novel by Piers Anthony published in 1981.

Octagon is a novel by Fred Saberhagen published in 1981.

The Palace of Dreams is a 1981 novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Set ostensibly in the Ottoman Empire, but in a deliberately imprecise past shaded by myth and intended to represent the modern totalitarian state, The Palace of Dreams follows the rapid rise of Mark-Alem, a young Ottoman Albanian related to the powerful Köprülü family, within the bureaucratic regime of the title palace, a shady ministry whose objective is to gather, examine and interpret the dreams of the empire's subjects in order to uncover the master-dreams, which are believed to shell the future destiny of the Sultan and the state.

Porvarin morsian is a historical novel by Finnish author Kaari Utrio.

Raja Gidh by Bano Qudsia is an Urdu novel. Gidh is the Urdu word for a vulture and Raja is a Hindi synonym for king. The name anticipates the kingdom of vultures. In fact, parallel to the main plot of the novel, an allegorical story of such a kingdom is narrated. The metaphor of the vulture as an animal feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals is employed to portray the trespassing of ethical limits imposed by the society or by the religion.

Ringen oyf der Neshome is Eli Schechtman's autobiographical novel in two volumes. Volume 1 was published in 1981 and volume 2 was published in 1988. The novel deals with the lives of Jews in Russia and in Israel from the beginning until the end of the twentieth century.

Severina, or La speranza di suor Severina, is the last work of Italian writer Ignazio Silone, published posthumously in 1981.

Shadows of Sanctuary is a short story collection edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and published in 1981. It is the third in the Thieves' World anthology series.

So Long a Letter is a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel originally written in French by the Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ. Its theme is the condition of women in Western African society.

Spacetime Donuts is a novel by Rudy Rucker published in 1981.

Starship & Haiku is a novel by Somtow Sucharitkul published in 1981.

Teheran, een zwanezang is a novel by the Dutch author F. Springer, published in 1991. It is a love story set against the background of the Iranian Revolution.

Three Filipino Women: Novellas is a book authored by award-winning Filipino literary writer, F. Sionil José. The book is a compilation of three novellas, each narrating a segment in the life and experiences of three women in the Philippines, providing the reader a journey to the "mentality and geography of the Philippines" and to the use of English as a language that the characters are "trying to make their own", reflective of how a Filipino speak in Philippine English, characterized by being "heavy on the reflexive" and with its own form of "phrasing" and "edge of formality".

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is the debut mystery novel of Soji Shimada, the musician and writer on astrology who is best known as an author of over 100 mystery novels. Besides being Shimada's first novel and a best seller, it was nominated for the prestigious Edogawa Rampo Prize for mystery novels.

The Traitor's Niche is a historical novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It was first published in Tirana, Albania in 1978. The English translation by John Hodgson was published in 2017. It is part of a loose trilogy that includes The Three-Arched Bridge and The Palace of Dreams.

The Twelve Abbots of Challant is an historical novel by Laura Mancinelli published in 1981 and winner of the Mondello Prize in the same year.

Twilight of the Eastern Gods is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It was published in installments in Albania between 1962 and 1978, and published in full in 1981 in the French translation of Jusuf Vrioni. The English translation by David Bellos, published in 2014, was made from Vrioni's French.

The War of the End of the World is a 1981 novel written by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. It is a fictionalized account of the War of Canudos conflict in late 19th-century Brazil.

Wedding Song also known as joys of the dome is a 1981 Arabic-language novel by Naguib Mahfouz. In the novel a narrator tells and retells the story of a marriage, each time from different character's perspective. In Naguib Mahfouz's 1981 novel Wedding Song, the narrator tells and retells the story of a marriage from the very different perspectives of the main characters, deepening the reader's understanding of “what happened in the end we read the true story by the main narrator ." In ramadan of 2016 there were an Egyptian TV series with same name.