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 the U.K. BBC Radio 4.
• March – Philip Larkin ends his relationships with Maeve Brennan and Betty Mackereth.
• April – James Blaylock's first published story, "The Ape-Box Affair", appears in Unearth magazine, pioneering steampunk fiction.
• August 1 – Barbara Pym is a 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 a seven-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.

• The Berlin State Library's new Haus Potsdamer Straße is completed and opened in West Berlin's Kulturforum.

  New books

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
• Richard Bach – Illusions
• Beryl Bainbridge – Young Adolf
• Thomas Berger –
• Thomas Bernhard – Yes
• Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Hero of Women
• 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
• Chantal Chawaf – Rougeâtre
• John Cheever – The Stories of John Cheever
• C. J. Cherryh – Well of Shiuan
• Cho Se-hui – The Dwarf
• 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
• 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
• Jane Gardam – God on the Rocks
• 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
• M. M. Kaye – The Far Pavilions
• Stephen King
• *The Stand
• *Night Shift
• Christopher Koch – The Year of Living Dangerously
• Larry Kramer – Faggots
• Judith Krantz – Scruples
• Jaan Kross – The Czar's Madman
• Derek Lambert – The Saint Peter's Plot
• Camara Laye – Le Maître de la parole – Kouma Lafôlô Kouma
• 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
• Alice Munro – Who Do You Think You Are?
• 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
• Jaswant Singh Kanwal – Lahoo Di Lo
• 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
• Alicia Austin – Alicia Austin's Age of Dreams
• Judy Blume – Wifey
• Raymond Briggs – The Snowman
• Roald Dahl – The Enormous Crocodile
• Rumer Godden – A Kindle of Kittens
• Gwen Grant – Private – Keep Out
• David Larkin – Faeries
• Bill Peet – Eli
• David Rees – The Exeter Blitz
• Seymour Reit
• *All Kinds of Planes
• *All Kinds of Ships
• *All Kinds of Trains
• *Sails, Rails, and Wings
• Louis Sachar – Sideways Stories from Wayside School
• Rosemary Sutcliff – Song for a Dark Queen
• Arnold Wesker – Fatlips: A Story for Children
• Arnulf Zitelmann – Kleiner Weg

  Drama

• Miguel M. Abrahão – O Chifrudo
• Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Brian Clark – Whose Life Is It Anyway?
• Max Frisch – Tryptichon: Drei szenische Bilder
• David Hare – Plenty
• Ira Levin – Deathtrap
• Mary O'Malley – Once a Catholic
• Heiner Müller – Germania Death in Berlin
• Harold Pinter – Betrayal
• Sam Shepard – Buried Child
• Martin Sherman – Bent
• Victoria Wood – Talent

  Poetry

• Maya Angelou – And Still I Rise
• Robert Minhinnick – A Thread in the Maze
• Luis Alberto Spinetta – Guitarra Negra
• John Tripp – Collected Poems

  Non-fiction

• Hannah Arendt – The Life of the Mind
• 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 –
• John Gall – Systemantics
• H. R. Haldeman – The Ends of Power
• Mollie Katzen – Moosewood Cookbook
• Mary Midgley – Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature
• New York International Bible Society – Holy Bible, New International Version
• 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

• :it:Filippo Bologna|Filippo Bologna, Italian novelist and screenwriter
• David Llewellyn, Welsh screenwriter
• Samanta Schweblin, Argentine fiction writer
• Rachel Trezise, Welsh novelist and short story writer

  Deaths

• January 12 – Robert Harbin, South African-born author of books on magic
• March 1 – Paul Scott, English novelist, playwright and poet
• March 24 – Leigh Brackett, American science fiction writer
• April 14 – F. R. Leavis, English academic literary critic
• May 1 – Sylvia Townsend Warner, English poet and novelist
• May 12 – Louis Zukofsky, American modernist poet
• June 11 – Carola Oman, English historical novelist, biographer and children's writer
• June 18 – Walter C. Alvarez, American medical author
• August 11 – Berta Ruck, Indian-born Welsh romantic novelist
• August 28 – Robert Shaw, English-born actor, novelist and playwright
• September 3 – Basil Willey, English academic literary critic
• September 15 – Edmund Crispin, English crime writer and composer
• September 28 – Pope John Paul I, Italian author of Illustrissimi
• November 5 – N. Crevedia, Romanian poet, novelist and journalist
• November 15 – Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist and author

  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