1988 in literature

Events

March 7 – 1988 Writers Guild of America strike: One day after rejecting a final offer from producers, 9,000 movie and television writers go on strike.

May 28–31 – First Hay Festival of literature held in the Welsh Marches.

May 30 – Alaric Hunt and his brother kill student Joyce Austin in Clemson, South Carolina, USA. While a prisoner, he becomes a prize-winning crime novelist.

June – The Panasonic Globe Theatre in Tokyo opens with an Ingmar Bergman production of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

August 7 – Writers Guild of America strike formally ends.

Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба, completed 1959) is first published in the Soviet Union, originally in the magazine Oktyabr.

Fiction

Caio Fernando Abreu – Os dragões não conhecem o paraíso (Dragons, short stories)

Margaret Atwood – Cat's Eye

Bernardo Atxaga – Obabakoak (short stories)

J. G. Ballard

Memories of the Space Age

Running Wild

Iain M. Banks – The Player of Games

Clive Barker

Cabal

The Hellbound Heart

Thomas Berger – The Houseguest

Michael Blake – Dances with Wolves

Dionne Brand – Sans Souci and Other Stories

Ray Bradbury – The Toynbee Convector

Orson Scott Card – Treason

Peter Carey – Oscar and Lucinda

Roger Caron – Jojo

Michael Chabon – The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Tom Clancy – The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist

Hugh Cook – The Walrus and the Warwolf

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Rifles

Wildtrack

Jim Crace – The Gift of Stones

Tsitsi Dangarembga – Nervous Conditions

L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – The Stones of Nomuru

Don DeLillo – Libra

Dương Thu Hương – Paradise of the Blind (Những thiên đường mù)

Allan W. Eckert – The Dark Green Tunnel

Umberto Eco – Foucault's Pendulum (Il pendolo di Foucault)

John Gardner – Scorpius

Thomas Harris – The Silence of the Lambs

Joseph Heller – Picture This

Alan Hollinghurst – The Swimming Pool Library

William Horwood – Duncton Wood

Hamid Ismailov – Собрание Утончённых

Judith Krantz – 'Til We Meet Again

Doris Lessing – The Fifth Child

Robert Ludlum – The Icarus Agenda

Javier Marías – Todas las almas (All Souls)

David Markson – Wittgenstein's Mistress

James A. Michener – Alaska

Robert B. Parker – Crimson Joy

Belva Plain – Tapestry

Ellis Peters

The Confession of Brother Haluin

A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael

Richard Powers – Prisoner's Dilemma

Tim Powers – On Stranger Tides

Terry Pratchett

Sourcery

Wyrd Sisters

Christoph Ransmayr – The Last World

Jean Raspail – Blue Island

Alina Reyes – The Butcher

Salman Rushdie – The Satanic Verses

Richard Russo – The Risk Pool

R. A. Salvatore – The Crystal Shard (first of The Icewind Dale Trilogy)

Sidney Sheldon – The Sands of Time

Clark Ashton Smith – A Rendezvous in Averoigne

Danielle Steel – Zoya

Thomas Sullivan – The Phases of Harry Moon

Nikolai Tolstoy – The Coming of the King

Anne Tyler – Breathing Lessons

Andrew Vachss – Blue Belle

Mario Vargas Llosa – In Praise of the Stepmother (Elogio de la madrastra)

Banana Yoshimoto – Kitchen

Children and young people

Chris Van Allsburg - Two Bad Ants

Martin Auer – Now, Now, Markus (Bimbo und sein Vogel)

Roald Dahl – Matilda

Virginia Hamilton (with Barry Moser) - In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World

Elizabeth Laird – Red Sky in the Morning (also as Loving Ben)

Geraldine McCaughrean – A Pack of Lies

Patricia McKissack – Mirandy and Brother Wind

William Joyce – Robots

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (with Willi Glasauer) – Escenas de la Literatura Universal y Retratos de Grandes Autores|Scenes from World Literature and Portraits of Greatest Authors

Drama

Alan Bennett – Single Spies (stage versions of An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution)

Thomas Bernhard – Heldenplatz

David Henry Hwang – M. Butterfly

Ann-Marie MacDonald – Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

Peter Shaffer – Lettice and Lovage

Tom Stoppard – Hapgood

Botho Strauß – Seven Doors

Poetry

Giannina Braschi – El imperio de los sueños (Empire of Dreams)

James Merrill – The Inner Room

Grazyna Miller – "Curriculum"

Non-fiction

Albert Goldman – The Lives of John Lennon

Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time

Patrick Macnee and Marie Cameron – Blind in One Ear: The Avenger Returns (Macnee's autobiography)

Lou Mollgaard – Kiki: Reine de la Montparnasse

Rosalind Miles – The Women's History of the World

Alanna Nash – Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch

Lady Violet Powell – The Life of a Provincial Lady: A Study of E. M. Delafield and Her Works

Philip Roth – The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

Miranda Seymour – A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and his Literary Circle, 1895–1915

Joe Simpson – Touching the Void

William L. Sullivan – Listening for Coyote

Frédéric Vitoux – Céline: A Biography (La Vie de Céline)

Births

May 18 – Luu Quang Minh, Vietnamese writer and singer

Deaths

February 3 – Robert Duncan, American poet (born 1919)

February 6 – Marghanita Laski, English biographer, novelist and broadcaster (born 1915)

February 28 – Kylie Tennant, Australian novelist, playwright and historian (born 1912)

March 19 – Máirtín Ó Direáin, Irish-language poet (born 1910)

May 3 – Premendra Mitra, Bengali poet, novelist and short story writer (born 1904)

April 12 – Alan Paton, South African novelist and political activist (born 1903)

April 15 – Modest Morariu, Romanian poet, essayist, prose writer and translator (born 1929)

April 21 – I. A. L. Diamond, Bessarabian-born American comedy writer (born 1920)

May 8 – Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer (born 1907)

June 10 – Louis L'Amour, American western novelist (born 1908)

June 21 – George Ivașcu, Romanian journalist, literary critic, and communist militant (born 1911)

July 10 – Enrique Lihn, Chilean poet, playwright, and novelist (cancer, born 1929)

July 12 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer (born 1908)

August 20 – Joan G. Robinson, English children's writer and illustrator (born 1910)

August 23 – Menotti Del Picchia, Brazilian poet, journalist and painter (born 1892)

August 28 – Max Shulman, American novelist, short-story writer and dramatist (born 1919)

September 28 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (born 1912)

October 1 – Sacheverell Sitwell, English art critic (born 1897)

October 16 – Christian Matras, Faroese poet (born 1900)

November 2 – Stewart Parker, Northern Irish poet and playwright (cancer, born 1941)

Unknown date – Frank Bonham, American western and young adult novelist (born 1914)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Naguib Mahfouz

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Tom Flood, Oceana Fine

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Judith Beveridge, The Domesticity of Giraffes

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Judith Beveridge, The Domesticity of Giraffes

Mary Gilmore Prize: Judith Beveridge, The Domesticity of Giraffes

Miles Franklin Award: No award presented

Canada

See 1988 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Grand Prix de Littérature Policière International: Andrew Vachss, Strega

Prix Goncourt: Érik Orsenna, L'Exposition coloniale

Prix Médicis French: Christiane Rochefort, La Porte du fond

Prix Médicis International: Thomas Bernhard, les Maîtres anciens

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Geraldine McCaughrean, A Pack of Lies

Cholmondeley Award: John Heath-Stubbs, Sean O'Brien, John Whitworth

Eric Gregory Award: Michael Symmons Roberts, Gwyneth Lewis, Adrian Blackledge, Simon Armitage, Robert Crawford

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Piers Paul Read, A Season in the West

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig (1889–1921)

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Derek Walcott

Whitbread Best Book Award: Paul Sayer, The Comforts of Madness

The Sunday Express Book of the Year: David Lodge, Nice Work

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Maxine Scates, Toluca Street

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Richard Wilbur

Frost Medal: Carolyn Kizer

National Book Award for Fiction: Pete Dexter, Paris Trout

National Book Critics Circle: Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories

Nebula Award: Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Russell Freedman, Lincoln: A Photobiography

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Alfred Uhry, Driving Miss Daisy

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Toni Morrison, Beloved

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William Meredith: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Lydia Davis, Bruce Duffy, Jonathan Franzen, Mary La Chapelle, William T. VollmannNonfiction: Gerald Early, Geoffrey O'BrienPoetry: Michael Burkard, Li-Young Lee, Sylvia Moss

Spain

Premio Nadal: Juan Pedro Aparicio, Retratos de ambigú