1945 in literature

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The year 1945 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• November 1 - The magazine Ebony is published for the first time.
• Noël Coward's short play, Still Life, is adapted to become the film, Brief Encounter.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for criticism of Stalin.
• The novelist Colette becomes president of the Académie Goncourt.
• Vladimir Nabokov becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States.
• André Malraux is appointed minister of information by French President Charles de Gaulle.

New books

• Ivo Andric – The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini Ćuprija)
• Rev. W. V. Awdry – The Three Railway Engines
• Frans Gunnar Bengtsson – The Long Ships (Röde Orm)
• Robert Bloch – The Opener of the Way
• Hermann Broch – The Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergil)
• Gwendolyn Brooks – A Street in Bronzeville
• Taylor Caldwell – The Wide House
• John Dickson Carr – The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (as by Carter Dickson)
• Vera Caspary – Bedelia
• Agatha Christie – Sparkling Cyanide
• Colette – Gigi
• Thomas B. Costain – The Black Rose
• Gertrude Crampton – Tootle
• August Derleth
  • "In Re: Sherlock Holmes" – The Adventures of Solar Pons
  • Something Near
• Varian Fry – Surrender on Demand
• Henry Green – Loving
• Ruth Krauss – The Carrot Seed
• Margery Lawrence – Number Seven, Queer Street
• Robert Lawson – Rabbit Hill
• J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories
• Carlo Levi – Christ Stopped at Eboli
• C. S. Lewis – That Hideous Strength
• H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth – The Lurker at the Threshold
• Hugh MacLennan – Two Solitudes
• Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love
• R. K. Narayan - The English Teacher
• George Orwell – Animal Farm
• Gabrielle Roy – Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute)
• Jean-Paul Sartre – The Age of Reason
• Elizabeth Smart – By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
• John Steinbeck – Cannery Row
• James Thurber – The Thurber Carnival (anthology)
• Elio Vittorini – Uomini e no
• Mika Waltari – The Egyptian
• Evangeline Walton – Witch House
• Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
• E. B. White – Stuart Little
• Odella Phelps Wood – High Ground
• Cornell Woolrich – Night Has a Thousand Eyes
• Richard Wright – Black Boy

New drama

• Mary Chase - Harvey
• Jean Giraudoux - The Madwoman of Chaillot (posthumously produced)
• Curt Goetz - The House in Montevideo
• Arthur Laurents - Home of the Brave

Poetry

• Idris Davies - Tonypandy and other poems

Non-fiction

• R. G. Collingwood – The Idea of Nature
• Arthur Koestler – The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays
• Betty MacDonald – The Egg and I
• Karl Popper – The Open Society and Its Enemies
• Bertrand Russell – A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
• Ernesto Sábato - Uno y el Universo (One and the Universe)
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. – The Age of Jackson

Births

• January 3 - David Starkey, historian
• January 30 - Michael Dorris, author (+ 1997)
• February 25 - Shiva Naipaul, novelist
• March 19 - Jim Turner, editor (+ 1999)
• April 2 - Anne Waldman, poet
• April 27 - August Wilson, playwright
• April 30 - Annie Dillard
• July 9 - Dean R. Koontz, novelist
• September 1 Scott Spencer novelist
• October 15 - John Murrell, dramatist
• December 17 - Jacqueline Wilson, best-selling children's author
• date unknown - Raymond E. Feist, American fantasy author
• - Robert Gray, poet

Deaths

• January 13 - Margaret Deland, novelist
• January 22 - Else Lasker-Schuler, poet (born 1869)
• March 12 - Anne Frank, author of The Diary of Anne Frank, (born 1929) at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
• March 20 - Lord Alfred Douglas, poet and former lover of Oscar Wilde (born 1870)
• April 9 - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian (born 1906, murdered by German Nationalsozialists)
• May 15 - Charles Williams, British author
• July 13 - Alla Nazimova, actress, scriptwriter and producer (born 1879)
• August 18 - E. R. Eddison, British fantasy writer
• August 20 - Alexander Roda Roda, novelist
• August 26 - Franz Werfel, German language writer
• October 8 - Felix Salten, author of Bambi
• November 21 - Robert Benchley, humorist
• December 4 - Arthur Morrison, writer
• December 28 - Theodore Dreiser, author (born 1871)
• date unknown - Charles Gilman Norris, novelist
• date unknown - Charles Maurice Donnay, dramatist

Awards

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: L. A. G. Strong, Travellers
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: D. S. MacColl, Philip Wilson Steer
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill
• Nobel Prize for literature: Gabriela Mistral
• Premio Nadal: José Félix Tapia, La luna ha entrado en casa
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Mary Chase, Harvey
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Karl Shapiro, V-Letter and Other Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Hersey, A Bell for Adano