1987 in literature

Events

• January 2 – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton children's books are replaced by the British publisher with gnomes after complaints of a racial offence implication.
• April – K. W. Jeter coins the term "Steampunk" in a letter published in Locus: the magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field.
• June – Virago Press of London publishes Down the Road, Worlds Away, a collection of short stories ostensibly by Rahila Khan, a young Muslim woman living in England. Three weeks later, Toby Forward, an Anglican clergyman, admits to writing them and the publisher withdraws the book. "He, unlike the editors at Virago, had grown up in precisely the kind of area and social conditions that the book described.... Although the book never claimed to be other than a work of fiction, the publishers destroyed the stock still in the warehouse and recalled all unsold copies from the bookshops, thus turning it into an expensive bibliographical rarity."
• July 31 – The United Kingdom Attorney General takes legal proceedings on security grounds against the London paper The Daily Telegraph to prevent it publishing details of the book Spycatcher. On September 23, an Australian court lifts its ban on the book's publication.
• August – A new building for the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington opens.

• Tom Wolfe is paid US $5 million for the film rights to his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, a record fee to an author at this time.
• Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses, first of the Inspector Rebus detective novels set around Edinburgh, is published in London.

  New books

Fiction

• Chinua Achebe – Anthills of the Savannah
• Peter Ackroyd – Chatterton
• Douglas Adams – Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
• Martin Amis – Einstein's Monsters
• Gilles Archambault – L'Obsédante obèse et autres agressions
• Paul Auster
• *The New York Trilogy
• *In the Country of Last Things
• Iain Banks
• *Consider Phlebas
• *Espedair Street
• Clive Barker – Weaveworld
• Greg Bear – The Forge of God
• Thomas Berger – Being Invisible
• William Boyd – The New Confessions
• T.C. Boyle – World's End
• Marion Zimmer Bradley – The Firebrand
• Truddi Chase – When Rabbit Howls
• Tom Clancy – Patriot Games
• Hugh Cook
• *The Wordsmiths and the Warguild
• *The Women and the Warlords
• Robin Cook – Outbreak
• Bernard Cornwell
• *Redcoat
• *Sharpe's Rifles
• Robert Crais – The Monkey's Raincoat
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – The Incorporated Knight
• Jenny Diski – Rainforest
• Jim Dodge – Not Fade Away
• Roddy Doyle – The Commitments
• Bret Easton Ellis – The Rules of Attraction
• James Ellroy – Black Dahlia
• Carlos Fuentes – Christopher Unborn
• Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean – Violent Cases
• John Gardner – No Deals, Mr. Bond
• Kaye Gibbons – Ellen Foster
• Ken Grimwood – Replay
• Larry Heinemann – Paco's Story
• Tom Holt – Expecting Someone Taller
• Josephine Humphreys – Rich in Love
• Dương Thu Hương – Bên kia bờ ảo vọng
• John Jakes – Heaven and Hell
• Tahar Ben Jelloun – La Nuit sacrée
• Garrison Keillor – '
• Jesse Lee Kercheval – The Dogeater
• Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa – Ualalapi
• Stephen King
• *Misery
• *'
• *The Tommyknockers
• *The Eyes of the Dragon
• Penelope Lively – Moon Tiger
• Ian McEwan – The Child in Time
• Betty Mahmoody – Not Without My Daughter
• James A. Michener – Legacy
• Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons – Watchmen
• Finola Moorhead – Remember the Tarantella
• Toni Morrison – Beloved
• Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood
• V. S. Naipaul – The Enigma of Arrival
• Silvina Ocampo – Y así sucesivamente
• Michael Ondaatje – In the Skin of A Lion
• Robert B. Parker – Pale Kings and Princes
• Gary Paulsen – Hatchet
• Ellis Peters – The Hermit of Eyton Forest
• Rosamunde Pilcher – The Shell Seekers
• Peter Pohl – Vi kallar honom Anna
• Terry Pratchett
• *Equal Rites
• *Mort
• Paul Quarrington – King Leary
• Edward Rutherfurd – Sarum
• José Saramago – Baltasar and Blimunda
• Leonardo Sciascia – Porte aperte
• Michael Shea – Polyphemus
• Sidney Sheldon – Windmills of the Gods
• Lucius Shepard – The Jaguar Hunter
• Carol Shields –
• Michael Slade – Ghoul
• Danielle Steel
• *Fine Things
• *Kaleidoscope
• Hồ Anh Thái – Người và xe chạy dưới ánh trăng
• Scott Turow – Presumed Innocent
• Andrew Vachss – Strega
• Mario Vargas Llosa – The Storyteller
• Gore Vidal – Empire
• Barbara Vine – A Fatal Inversion
• William T. Vollmann – You Bright and Risen Angels
• Kurt Vonnegut – Bluebeard
• Gene Wolfe – The Urth of the New Sun
• Tom Wolfe – The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Gamel Woolsey – One Way of Love
• Roger Zelazny – Sign of Chaos

  Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – The Z Was Zapped
• Tedd Arnold – No Jumping on the Bed!
• Janice Elliott – The King Awakes
• Anne Fine – Madame Doubtfire
• Willi Glasauer – Grüße aus der Fremde
• Julius Lester –
• Bill Peet – Jethro and Joel Were a Troll
• Ruth Thomas – The Runaways
• Theresa Tomlinson – The Flither Pickers
• Audrey Wood – Heckedy Peg
• Jane Yolen – Owl Moon

  Drama

• Nezihe Araz – Afife Jale
• Caryl Churchill – Serious Money
• Robert Harling – Steel Magnolias
• Liz Lochhead – Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off
• Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield – The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
• Warren Manzi – Perfect Crime
• Yasmina Reza – Conversations après un enterrement
• Peter Shaffer – Lettice and Lovage

  Non-fiction

• Allan Bloom – The Closing of the American Mind
• David Bohm – Science, Order, and Creativity
• Robert V. Bruce – The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876
• Bruce Chatwin – The Songlines
• Nien Cheng – Life and Death in Shanghai
• Bill Cosby – Time Flies
• Andrea Dworkin – Intercourse
• Sita Ram Goel – The Calcutta Quran Petition
• C. Z. Guest – First Garden
• Robert Hughes – The Fatal Shore
• Paul Kennedy – The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000
• Nicholas Kenyon – Authenticity and Early Music
• Steven Long – Death Without Dignity: The Story of the First Nursing Home Corporation Indicted for Murder
• Salman Rushdie – '
• Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
• Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz – '
• Peter Wright – Spycatcher

  Births

• December 15 – Mayra Dias Gomes, Brazilian journalist and columnist

• Mina Adampour, Norwegian journalist, politician and activist of Iranian origin
• Katherine Rundell, English children's writer and academic brought up in Zimbabwe and Belgium

  Deaths

• January 15 – George Markstein, German-born English journalist and thriller writer
• February 2 – Alistair MacLean, Scottish thriller writer
• February 4 – Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Welsh journalist and broadcaster
• February 10 – William Rose, American screenwriter
• February 22 – Andy Warhol, American artist, director and writer
• March 4 – Maria Jolas, American-born French publisher and campaigner
• April 4 – C. L. Moore, American science fiction author
• April 11 – Erskine Caldwell, American novelist
• May 13 – Richard Ellmann, American-born biographer
• May 18 – Heðin Brú, Faroese fiction writer and translator
• May 30 – Norman Nicholson, English poet
• June 6 – Fulton Mackay, Scottish actor and playwright
• June 7 – Humberto Costantini, Argentinian writer
• July 26 – Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egyptian novelist and dramatist
• September 1 – Alan Reid, English-born Australian journalist
• September 25 – Emlyn Williams, Welsh dramatist
• September 30 – Alfred Bester, American science fiction writer
• October 3 – Jean Anouilh, French dramatist
• October 8 – Roger Lancelyn Green, English biographer and children's author
• October 31 – Joseph Campbell, American author and mythology expert
• November 29 – Gwendolyn MacEwen, Canadian poet
• December 1 – James Baldwin, African American novelist
• December 17 – Marguerite Yourcenar, French novelist and essayist

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Joseph Brodsky

  Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Jim Sakkas, Ilias
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Lily Brett, The Auschwitz Poems
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Philip Hodgins, Blood and Bone
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Jan Owen, Boy with Telescope
• Miles Franklin Award: Glenda Adams, Dancing on Coral

  Canada

• See 1987 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Tahar ben Jelloun, La Nuit sacrée
• Prix Médicis French: Pierre Mertens, Les Éblouissements
• Prix Médicis International: Antonio Tabucchi, Indian Nocturne

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Susan Price, The Ghost Drum
• Cholmondeley Award: Wendy Cope, Matthew Sweeney, George Szirtes
• Eric Gregory Award: Peter McDonald, Maura Dooley, Stephen Knight, Steve Anthony, Jill Maughan, Paul Munden
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: George Mackay Brown, The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Ruth Dudley Edwards, Victor Gollancz: A Biography
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Christopher Nolan, Under the Eye of the Clock
• Sunday Express Book of the Year: Brian Moore, The Colour of Blood

  United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: David Rivard, Torque
• Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Howard Nemerov
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Jacques Barzun
• Frost Medal: Robert Creeley / Sterling Brown
• National Book Critics Circle Award: to The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• National Book Award for Fiction: to Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann
• Nebula Award: Pat Murphy, The Falling Woman
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Sid Fleischman The Whipping Boy
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: August Wilson, Fences
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah
• Whiting Awards:

  Elsewhere

• Europe Theatre Prize: Ariane Mnouchkine, Théâtre du Soleil
• Premio Nadal: Juan José Saer, La ocasión