1988 in literature

Events

• March 7 – Nine thousand movie and television writers of the Writers' Guild of America go on strike a day after rejecting a final offer from producers.
• May 28–31 – The first Hay Festival of literature is held in the Welsh Marches.
• June – The Panasonic Globe Theatre, Tokyo, opens with an Ingmar Bergman production of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• August 7 – The Writers Guild of America strike formally ends.
• November 15 – Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 reforms copyright law in the United Kingdom, with special provision for Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children to benefit in perpetuity from royalties in J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

• Vasily Grossman's 1960 novel Life and Fate is published for the first time in the Soviet Union, in the magazine Oktyabr.

  New books

Fiction

• Caio Fernando Abreu – Os dragões não conhecem o paraíso
• Margaret Atwood – Cat's Eye
• Bernardo Atxaga – Obabakoak
• 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
• Robertson Davies – The Lyre of Orpheus
• L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – The Stones of Nomuru
• Don DeLillo – Libra
• Dương Thu Hương – Paradise of the Blind
• Allan W. Eckert – The Dark Green Tunnel
• Umberto Eco – Foucault's Pendulum
• 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
• Bernard-Henri Lévy – Les Derniers Jours de Charles Baudelaire
• Robert Ludlum – The Icarus Agenda
• Javier Marías – Todas las almas
• David Markson – Wittgenstein's Mistress
• James A. Michener – Alaska
• Robert B. Parker – Crimson Joy
• Belva Plain – Tapestry
• Ellis Peters
• *The Confession of Brother Haluin
• *'
• 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
• David Adams Richards – Nights Below Station Street
• Salman Rushdie – The Satanic Verses
• Richard Russo – The Risk Pool
• R. A. Salvatore – The Crystal Shard
• 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
• Banana Yoshimoto – Kitchen''

  Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – Two Bad Ants
• Martin Auer – Now, Now, Markus
• Roald Dahl – Matilda
• Janice Elliott – The Empty Throne
• Virginia Hamilton – In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World
• William Joyce – Robots
• Elizabeth Laird – Red Sky in the Morning
• Geraldine McCaughrean – A Pack of Lies
• Patricia McKissack – Mirandy and Brother Wind
• Beatrice Schenk de Regniers – Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child's Book of Poems
• Christopher Tolkien – The Return of the Shadow
• P. L. Travers – Mary Poppins and the House Next Door
• Manuel Vázquez Montalbán – Escenas de la Literatura Universal y Retratos de Grandes Autores

  Drama

• Alan Bennett – Single Spies
• Thomas Bernhard – Heldenplatz
• David Henry Hwang – M. Butterfly
• Ann-Marie MacDonald – Goodnight Desdemona
• Peter Shaffer – Lettice and Lovage
• Tom Stoppard – Hapgood
• Botho Strauß – Seven Doors

  Poetry

• Giannina Braschi – El imperio de los sueños
• James Merrill – The Inner Room
• Grazyna Miller – "Curriculum"

  Non-fiction

• David Herbert Donald – '
• Albert Goldman – The Lives of John Lennon
• Sita Ram Goel – Catholic Ashrams
• Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time
• K. S. Lal – The Mughal Harem
• Patrick Macnee and Marie Cameron – Blind in One Ear: The Avenger Returns
• 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 – '
• 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 –

  Births

• May 18 – Luu Quang Minh, Vietnamese writer and singer
• October 14 – Ocean Vuong, Vietnamese-American poet

• Fiona Mozley, English novelist and medievalist

  Deaths

• February 3 – Robert Duncan, American poet
• February 6 – Marghanita Laski, English biographer, novelist and broadcaster
• February 28 – Kylie Tennant, Australian novelist, playwright and historian
• March 19 – Máirtín Ó Direáin, Irish-language poet
• May 3 – Premendra Mitra, Bengali poet, novelist and short story writer
• April 12 – Alan Paton, South African novelist and political activist
• April 15 – Modest Morariu, Romanian poet, essayist, prose writer and translator
• April 21 – I. A. L. Diamond, Bessarabian-born American comedy writer
• May 8 – Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer
• June 10 – Louis L'Amour, American western novelist
• June 21 – George Ivașcu, Romanian journalist, literary critic, and communist militant
• July 10 – Enrique Lihn, Chilean poet, playwright, and novelist
• July 12 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer
• August 20 – Joan G. Robinson, English children's writer and illustrator
• August 23 – Menotti Del Picchia, Brazilian poet, journalist and painter
• August 28 – Max Shulman, American novelist, short-story writer and dramatist
• September 28 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist
• October 1 – Sacheverell Sitwell, English art critic
• October 16 – Christian Matras, Faroese poet
• November 2 – Stewart Parker, Northern Irish poet and playwright
• December 16 – Frank Bonham, American western and young adult novelist

  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
• 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,
• 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. Vollmann. Nonfiction: Gerald Early, Geoffrey O'Brien. Poetry: Michael Burkard, Li-Young Lee, Sylvia Moss

  Spain

• Premio Nadal:, Retratos de ambigú

  In literature

• July 15 – David Nicholls' novel One Day opens on this date.