1976 in literature

Events

• January – The first Kolkata Book Fair opens in India.
• June 21 – The Market Theatre is opened as a multiracial venue by Barney Simon.
• September 9 – The Royal Shakespeare Company starts a noted production of Shakespeare's Macbeth at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the leading roles, directed by Trevor Nunn.
• October 25 – The Royal National Theatre on London's South Bank opens in premises designed by Sir Denys Lasdun, with a performance of Goldoni's 18th-century comedy Il Campiello. Its Lyttleton Theatre first previews on 8 March, followed on 16 March by a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet by Albert Finney directed by Peter Hall. Its Olivier Theatre opens on October 4 with Marlowe's Elizabethan drama Tamburlaine, also with Finney in the title rôle, directed by Peter Hall.

• Novelist Antonio di Benedetto is imprisoned and tortured under the National Reorganization Process in Argentina.
• Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers is established in new premises at Nanterre.
• Saul Bellow wins both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

  New books

Fiction

• Émile Ajar – Hocus Bogus
• Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
• Ann Beattie – Chilly Scenes of Winter
• Saul Bellow – To Jerusalem and Back
• Peter Benchley – The Deep
• Caroline Blackwood – The Stepdaughter
• Erma Bombeck – The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank
• Marjorie Bowen – Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales
• John Braine – Waiting for Sheila
• William F. Buckley – Saving the Queen
• Anthony Burgess – Beard's Roman Women
• Ramsey Campbell – The Height of the Scream
• Leonora Carrington – The Hearing Trumpet
• Raymond Carver – Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
• Agatha Christie – Sleeping Murder
• A. J. Cronin – Lady with Carnations
• L. Sprague de Camp – The Virgin & the Wheels
• Samuel R. Delany – Triton
• August Derleth – Dwellers in Darkness
• Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny – Deus Irae
• G. B. Edwards – The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
• Buchi Emecheta – The Bride Price
• Marian Engel – Bear
• Richard Ford – A Piece of My Heart
• Brian Garfield – The Last Hard Men
• Judith Guest – Ordinary People
• Alex Haley –
• Frank Herbert – Children of Dune
• Derek Lambert – Blackstone Underground
• Etienne Leroux – Magersfontein, O Magersfontein!
• Ira Levin – The Boys from Brazil
• Robert Ludlum – The Gemini Contenders
• Ryū Murakami – Almost Transparent Blue
• R. K. Narayan – The Painter of Signs
• Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – Inferno
• Robert Nye – Falstaff
• Breandán Ó hEithir – Lig Sinn i gCathú
• Owain Owain – Y Dydd Olaf
• Marge Piercy – Woman on the Edge of Time
• Anthony Powell – Infants of the Spring
• Terry Pratchett – The Dark Side of the Sun
• Manuel Puig – Kiss of the Spider Woman
• Jean Raspail – Le Jeu du Roi
• Ishmael Reed – Flight To Canada
• Ruth Rendell – A Demon in My View
• Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire
• Hubert Selby, Jr. – The Demon
• Cynthia Propper Seton – A Fine Romance
• Tom Sharpe – Wilt
• Sidney Sheldon – A Stranger in the Mirror
• Alan Sillitoe – The Widower's Son
• Muriel Spark – The Takeover
• John Steinbeck – The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
• Jacqueline Susann – Dolores
• Paul Theroux – The Family Arsenal
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Secret Lives, and Other Stories
• Jesús Torbado – :es:En el día de hoy |En el día de hoy
• Leon Uris – Trinity
• Melvin Van Peebles – Just an Old Sweet Song
• Gore Vidal – 1876
• Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
• Alice Walker – Meridian
• Roger Zelazny
• *Doorways in the Sand
• *The Hand of Oberon
• *My Name is Legion''

  Children and young people

• Chester Aaron – Besser als Lachen
• Natalie Babbitt – Tuck Everlasting
• Judy Blume
• *Blubber
• *Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
• Nancy Bond – A String in the Harp
• Eve Bunting – One More Flight
• Adèle Geras – Tea at Mrs Manderby's
• Michael de Larrabeiti – The Borribles
• Penelope Lively – A Stitch in Time
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Monsters
• Dennis Nolan
• *Big Pig
• *Monster Bubbles: A Counting Book
• Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat on Clean-Up Day

  Drama

• Samuel Beckett
• *Footfalls
• *That Time
• Maeve Binchy – End of Term
• Howard Brenton – Weapons of Happiness
• Ken Campbell – Illuminatus!
• David Edgar – Destiny
• Athol Fugard – Sizwe Banzi Is Dead
• Roger Hall – Glide Time
• Dorothy Hewett – This Old Man Came Rolling Home
• Albert Innaurato – Gemini
• Ntozake Shange – For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
• Alexander Vampilov – Duck Hunting

  Non-fiction

• Maya Angelou – Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
• John G. Bennett – Journeys in Islamic Countries
• L. Sprague de Camp – Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers
• Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene
• Norman F. Dixon – On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
• Elisabeth Elliot – Let Me Be a Woman
• Michel Foucault – Histoire de la sexualité, 1: La Volonte de savoir
• Aileen Fox – Prehistoric Maori Fortifications
• Julien Gracq – The Narrow Waters
• Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind
• Ryszard Kapuściński – Another Day of Life
• John Keegan – The Face of Battle
• Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior
• Arthur Koestler – The Thirteenth Tribe
• H. P. Lovecraft
• *Selected Letters IV
• *Selected Letters V
• *To Quebec and the Stars
• Paul Morand – The Allure of Chanel
• Peter C. Newman – The Canadian Establishment
• Harold Perkin – The Age of the Automobile
• Jean-François Revel – The Totalitarian Temptation
• Geoffrey Smith
• *Mr Smith's Flower Garden
• *Mr Smith's Vegetable Garden
• Arnold J. Toynbee – Mankind and Mother Earth
• Andrew Vachss – The Life-Style Violent Juvenile
• Simon Wiesenthal – The Sunflower
• Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein – The Final Days

  Births

• February 3 – Isla Fisher, Australian actress and author
• August 29 – T. James Belich, American playwright, novelist and actor
• October 31 – Seth Abramson, American professor and poet

• :fr:Marion Brunet|Marion Brunet, French young adult and crime fiction writer
• Jon McGregor, Bermuda-born British fiction writer

  Deaths

• January 12 – Agatha Christie, English crime writer
• January 25 – Victor Ehrenberg, German historian
• February 2 – Barbara Euphan Todd, English children's writer
• February 12 – John Lewis, Welsh philosopher
• March 7 – Tove Ditlevsen, Danish poet and fiction writer, suicide
• March 13 – Sergiu Dan, Romanian novelist and journalist
• March 24 – E. H. Shepard, English illustrator and autobiographer
• March 31 – Edward Streeter, American humorist
• April 17 – Allardyce Nicoll, British literary scholar
• April 22 – Joe David Brown, American novelist and journalist
• April 28 – Richard Hughes, English novelist
• May 7 – Alison Uttley, English writer of children's books
• June 18 – Malcolm Johnson, American journalist
• July 3 – Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Austrian poet, dramatist and fiction writer
• August 29 – Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali poet
• September 10 – Dalton Trumbo, American novelist and screenwriter
• October 30 – Barbu Solacolu, Romanian poet, translator and economist
• November 4 – Robert Speaight, English actor, biographer and essayist
• November 6 – Patrick Dennis, American novelist
• December 21 – Munro Leaf, American children's author
• December 22 – Martín Luis Guzmán, Mexican novelist and journalist
• December 26 – Yashpal, Hindi novelist
• December 29 – G. B. Edwards, Guernsey-born writer

• Mark Slonim, Russian literary historian and critic

  Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Saul Bellow

  Canada

• See 1976 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

  France

• Prix Goncourt: Patrick Grainville, Les Flamboyants
• Prix Médicis French: Marc Cholodenko, Les États du désert
• Prix Médicis International: Doris Lessing, The Gold Coronet – United Kingdom

  Spain

• Premio Miguel de Cervantes: Jorge Guillén

  United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: David Storey, Saville
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Jan Mark, Thunder and Lightnings
• Cholmondeley Award: Peter Porter, Fleur Adcock
• Eric Gregory Award: Stewart Brown, Valerie Gillies, Paul Groves, Paul Hyland, Nigel Jenkins, Andrew Motion, Tom Paulin, William Peskett
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: John Banville, Doctor Copernicus
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Chekhov

  United States

• Frost Medal: A. M. Sullivan
• Nebula Award: Frederik Pohl, Man Plus
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Susan Cooper, The Grey King
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Michael Bennett for concept, choreography, and direction; James Kirkwood, Jr. for book, Marvin Hamlisch for lyrics, Nicholas Dante for music, A Chorus Line
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

  Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: David Ireland, The Glass Canoe
• Premio Nadal: Raúl Guerra Garrido, Lectura insólita de El Capital
• Viareggio Prize: Mario Tobino, La bella degli specchi