The year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Edward Wadie Saïd (Arabic pronunciation: [wædiːʕ sæʕiːd] Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد‎, Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. Said was a Palestinian born in Jerusalem (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) and held an American passport. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism.Robert Fisk described him as the Palestinians' "most powerful political voice."

Said was an influentialcultural critic and author, known best for his book Orientalism (1978). The book presented his influential ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. Said contended that Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction of Conrad, and in the post-structuralist theory of Foucault, Derrida and others, Said's Orientalism and following works proved influential in literary theory and criticism, and continue to influence several other fields in the humanities. Orientalism affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East. Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.

John Anthony Frusciante ⁱ/fruːˈʃɑːnteɪ/; born March 5, 1970) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, record and film producer. He is best known as the former guitarist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he had been for a number of years and recorded five studio albums. Frusciante has an active solo career, having released ten albums under his own name, as well as two with Josh Klinghoffer and Joe Lally as Ataxia. His solo recordings include elements ranging from experimental rock and ambient music to New Wave and electronica. Influenced by guitarists of various genres, Frusciante emphasizes melody and emotion in his guitar playing, and favors vintage guitars and analog recording techniques.

Frusciante joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers at eighteen years old, first appearing on the band's 1989 album, Mother's Milk. The group's follow-up album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991), was a breakthrough success. However, he was overwhelmed by the band's new popularity and quit in 1992. He became a recluse and entered a long period of drug addiction, during which he released his first solo recordings: Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (1994) and then Smile from the Streets You Hold (1997). In 1998, he successfully completed drug rehabilitation and rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers with the album Californication (1999). His album To Record Only Water for Ten Days was made in 2001. On a creative spree, Frusciante released six solo albums in 2004; each album explored different recording techniques and genres. In 2009, Frusciante released The Empyrean and again parted ways with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As of 2011, Frusciante is currently working on his eleventh solo album. Frusciante has produced and/or recorded with the Wu-Tang Clan, The Mars Volta, George Clinton and others. His most recent solo releases will be a 5 song EP entitled Letur-Lefr, due out in July 2012, and a full length album entitled PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, due out in late 2012.

Slavoj Žižek (pronounced [ˈslavoj ˈʒiʒɛk]; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory and theoretical psychoanalysis.

Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a professor at the European Graduate School. He has been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, London Consortium, Princeton University, New York University, The New School, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana.

Žižek uses examples from popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist economic criticism to interpret and speak extensively on immediately current social phenomena, including the current ongoing global financial crisis. In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman on the New York City radio show Democracy Now! he described himself as a "communist in a qualified sense" and in another appearance on the show in October 2009 he described himself as a "radical leftist".