1978 in literature

Events

March 8 – Douglas Adams' comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy originates as a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.

March – Philip Larkin ends his relationships with Maeve Brennan and Betty Mackereth.

April – James Blaylock's first published story, "The Ape-Box Affair" in Unearth magazine, pioneers steampunk fiction.

August 1 – Barbara Pym is the guest on Desert Island Discs.

October – The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to books with unusual titles, is launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The first winner is Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

November 15 – Harold Pinter's play Betrayal, inspired by his 7-year clandestine extramarital affair with BBC Television presenter Joan Bakewell, opens at the National Theatre in London, directed by Peter Hall and featuring Penelope Wilton and her husband at this time Daniel Massey with Michael Gambon.

Fiction

Etel Adnan – Sitt Marie Rose

Srikrishna Alanahalli – Parasangada Gendethimma

Kingsley Amis – Jake's Thing

Martin Amis – Success

Jessica Anderson – Tirra Lirra by the River

Aharon Appelfeld – Badenheim 1939 (באדנהיים עיר נופש, Badenhaim `ir nofesh)

Richard Bach – Illusions

Beryl Bainbridge – Young Adolf

Thomas Berger – Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel

Thomas Bernhard – Yes (Ja)

Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Hero of Women (El héroe de las mujeres)

William Peter Blatty – The Ninth Configuration

Charles Bukowski – Women

Anthony Burgess – 1985

Taylor Caldwell – Bright Flows the River

Alejo Carpentier – El arpa y la sombra (The Harp and the Shadow)

Chantal Chawaf – Rougeâtre

John Cheever – The Stories of John Cheever

C. J. Cherryh – Well of Shiuan

Cho Se-hui – The Dwarf (난장이가 쏘아 올린 작은 공, A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball)

Brian Cleeve – Judith

Mary Elizabeth Counselman – Half in Shadow

L. Sprague de Camp

The Best of L. Sprague de Camp

The Great Fetish

Conan the Swordsman (with Lin Carter and Björn Nyberg)

Samuel R. Delany – Empire: A Visual Novel

Don DeLillo – Running Dog

Nelson DeMille – By the Rivers of Babylon

Phyllis Eisenstein – Born to Exile

J. G. Farrell – The Singapore Grip

Howard Fast – Second Generation

Ken Follett – Eye of the Needle

Alan Dean Foster – Splinter of the Mind's Eye

Ernest J. Gaines – In My Father's House

Graham Greene – The Human Factor

Donald Hamilton – The Silencers

Harry Harrison – The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You

James Herbert – The Spear

William Hjortsberg – Falling Angel

Timothy Mo – The Monkey King

John Irving – The World According to Garp

Marshall Jevons – Murder at the Margin

James Jones – Whistle

Ismail Kadare – The Three-Arched Bridge (Ura Me Tri Harqe)

M. M. Kaye – The Far Pavilions

Stephen King

The Stand

Night Shift (collection of short stories including "Children of the Corn")

Christopher Koch – The Year of Living Dangerously

Larry Kramer – Faggots

Judith Krantz – Scruples

Jaan Kross – The Czar's Madman (Keisri hull)

Camara Laye – Le Maître de la parole – Kouma Lafôlô Kouma (The Guardian of the Word)

Ursula K. Le Guin – The Eye of the Heron

Madeleine L'Engle – A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Robert Ludlum – The Holcroft Covenant

John D. MacDonald – The Empty Copper Sea

David Malouf – An Imaginary Life

Dambudzo Marechera – The House of Hunger

Richard Matheson – What Dreams May Come

Ian McEwan – The Cement Garden

James A. Michener – Chesapeake

Patrick Modiano – Rue des boutiques obscures (translated as Missing Person)

Alice Munro – Who Do You Think You Are? (The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose in U.S.)

Larry Niven – The Magic Goes Away

Tim O'Brien – Going After Cacciato

Andrew J. Offutt – Conan and the Sorcerer

John L. Parker Jr. – Once a Runner

Robert B. Parker – The Judas Goat

Elizabeth Peters – Street of the Five Moons

William Luther Pierce – The Turner Diaries

Belva Plain – Evergreen

Mario Puzo – Fools Die

Mary Renault – The Praise Singer

Ruth Rendell – A Sleeping Life

Hubert Selby Jr. – Requiem for a Dream

Whitley Strieber – The Wolfen

Thomas Sullivan – Diapason

John Updike – The Coup

Gore Vidal – Kalki

William Wharton – Birdy

Herman Wouk – War and Remembrance

Richard Yates – A Good School

Frank Yerby – Hail the Conquering Hero

Roger Zelazny – The Courts of Chaos

Children and young people

Janet and Allan Ahlberg – Each Peach, Pear, Plum (approximate year)

Judy Blume – Wifey

Rumer Godden – A Kindle of Kittens

David Larkin (with Brian Froud and Alan Lee) - Faeries

Bill Peet – Eli

David Rees – The Exeter Blitz

Seymour Reit (with Roberto Innocenti) - All Kinds of Planes

Seymour Reit (with Roberto Innocenti) - All Kinds of Ships

Seymour Reit (with Roberto Innocenti) - All Kinds of Trains

Seymour Reit (with Roberto Innocenti) - Sails, Rails, and Wings

Louis Sachar – Sideways Stories from Wayside School (first in the Wayside School series of five books)

Rosemary Sutcliff – Song for a Dark Queen

Arnold Wesker – Fatlips: A Story for Children

Arnulf Zitelmann (with Willi Glasauer) – Kleiner Weg (Small Trail)

Drama

Miguel M. Abrahão – O Chifrudo

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio play)

Brian Clark – Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Max Frisch – Tryptichon: Drei szenische Bilder (Triptych)

David Hare – Plenty

Ira Levin – Deathtrap

Mary O'Malley – Once a Catholic

Heiner Müller – Germania Death in Berlin (first performance)

Harold Pinter – Betrayal

Martin Sherman – Bent

Poetry

Maya Angelou – And Still I Rise

Robert Minhinnick – A Thread in the Maze

Luis Alberto Spinetta – Guitarra Negra (Black Guitar)

John Tripp – Collected Poems

Non-fiction

Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg – Tabu Homosexualität

Roger Caron – Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars

Lord David Cecil – A Portrait of Jane Austen

Charlotte Chandler – Hello, I Must Be Going!

Beth Chatto – The Dry Garden

Christina Crawford – Mommie Dearest

Gerald Durrell – The Garden of the Gods

Don E. Fehrenbacher – The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics

John Gall – Systemantics

H. R. Haldeman – The Ends of Power

Mollie Katzen – Moosewood Cookbook

New York International Bible Society – Holy Bible, New International Version (translated into modern American English)

Richard Nixon – The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

M. Scott Peck – The Road Less Travelled

David Rorvik – In his Image: The Cloning of a Man

Edward Said – Orientalism

Births

February 1 – Arno Camenisch, Swiss writer

July 23 – Lauren Groff, American novelist and short story writer

October 24 – Kei Miller, Jamaican-born poet and fiction writer

Unknown dates

Filippo Bologna, Italian novelist and screenwriter

David Llewellyn, Welsh screenwriter

Rachel Trezise, Welsh novelist and short story writer

Deaths

January 12 – Robert Harbin, South African-born author of books on magic (born 1908)

March 1 – Paul Scott, English novelist, playwright and poet (born 1920)

March 24 – Leigh Brackett, American science fiction writer (born 1915)

April 14 – F. R. Leavis, English academic literary critic (born 1895)

May 1 – Sylvia Townsend Warner, English poet and novelist (born 1893)

May 12 – Louis Zukofsky, American modernist poet (born 1904)

June 11 – Carola Oman, English historical novelist, biographer and children's writer (born 1897)

June 18 – Walter C. Alvarez, American medical author (born 1884)

August 11 – Berta Ruck, Indian-born Welsh romantic novelist (born 1878)

September 3 – Basil Willey, English academic literary critic (died 1897)

September 15 – Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), English crime writer and composer (born 1921)

September 28 – Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani), Italian author of Illustrissimi (born 1912)

November 5 – N. Crevedia, Romanian poet, novelist and journalist (born 1902).

November 15 – Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist and author (born 1901)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Isaac Bashevis Singer

Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year is first awarded. The winner is Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

Canada

See 1978 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Patrick Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures

Prix Médicis French: Georges Perec, La vie mode d'emploi

Prix Médicis International: Aleksandr Zinovyev, L’Avenir radieux – Russia

Spain

Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Dámaso Alonso

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: David Rees, The Exeter Blitz

Cholmondeley Award: Christopher Hope, Leslie Norris, Peter Reading, D.M. Thomas, R.S. Thomas

Eric Gregory Award: Ciarán Carson, Peter Denman, Christopher Reid, Paul Wilkins, Martyn A. Ford, James Sutherland-Smith

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Maurice Gee, Plumb

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Robert Gittings, The Older Hardy

United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, Peter Taylor

Nebula Award: Vonda McIntyre, Dreamsnake

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Donald L. Coburn, The Gin Game

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: James Alan McPherson, Elbow Room

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Howard Nemerov, Collected Poems

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: Jessica Anderson, Tirra Lirra by the River

Premio Nadal: Germán Sánchez Espeso, Narciso

Viareggio Prize: Antonio Altomonte, Dopo il presidente