1976 in literature

List of years in literature       (table)
... 1966 .  1967 .  1968 .  1969  . 1970  . 1971  . 1972 ... 1973 1974 1975 -1976- 1977 1978 1979 ... 1980 .  1981 .  1982 .  1983  . 1984  . 1985  . 1986 ...      In poetry: 1973 1974 1975 -1976- 1977 1978 1979
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The year 1976 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Saul Bellow won both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

New books

• Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
• Saul Bellow – To Jerusalem and Back
• Peter Benchley – The Deep
• Judy Blume
  • Blubber
  • Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
• Erma Bombeck – The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank
• Marjorie Bowen – Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales
• William F. Buckley – Saving the Queen... The first in the Blackford Oakes series
• Anthony Burgess – Beard's Roman Women
• Ramsey Campbell The Height of the Scream
• 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
• Richard Ford – A Piece of My Heart
• Brian Garfield – The Last Hard Men
• Judith Guest – Ordinary People
• Alex Haley – Roots: The Saga of an American Family
• Frank Herbert – Children of Dune
• Ira Levin – The Boys from Brazil
• Robert Ludlum - The Gemini Contenders
• Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Monsters
• Marc Brown – Arthur's Nose (first book in the Arthur Adventure series of 27 books)
• Ryū Murakami – Almost Transparent Blue (Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū?)
• R. K. Narayan – The Painter of Signs
• Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle -Inferno
• Robert Nye – Falstaff
• Marge Piercy – Woman on the Edge of Time
• Anthony Powell – Infants of the Spring
• Terry Pratchett – The Dark Side of the Sun
• Manuel Puig – El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman)
• Ishmael Reed – Flight To Canada
• Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire
• Hubert Selby Jr. – The Demon
• Tom Sharpe - Wilt
• Sidney Sheldon – A Stranger in the Mirror
• Muriel Spark – The Takeover
• Jacqueline Susann – Dolores
• Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal
• Leon Uris – Trinity (novel)
• Melvin Van Peebles – Just An Old Sweet Song
• Gore Vidal – 1876
• Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick
• Roger Zelazny
  • Doorways in the Sand
  • The Hand of Oberon
  • My Name is Legion

New drama

• Athol Fugard – Sizwe Banzi is Dead
• Dorothy Hewett – This Old Man Came Rolling Home

Poetry

Main article: 1976 in poetry

Non-fiction

• Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene
• L. Sprague deCamp – Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers
• Michel Foucault – Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonte de savoir
• Christopher Isherwood - Christopher and His Kind
• Ryszard Kapuściński – Another Day of Life
• Arthur Koestler – The Thirteenth Tribe
• H. P. Lovecraft
  • Selected Letters IV (1932–1934)
  • Selected Letters V (1934–1937)
  • To Quebec and the Stars
• Peter C. Newman – The Canadian Establishment
• Jean-François Revel – The Totalitarian Temptation
• 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, actress and author
• April 1 – David Chapman, music journalist
• August 29 – T. James Belich (Colorado Tolston, pseudonym), playwright, novelist and actor

Deaths

• January 12 – Agatha Christie, best-selling crime writer
• January 25 – Victor Ehrenberg, historian
• February 12 – John Lewis, philosopher
• March 24 – E. H. Shepard, book illustrator
• March 31 – Edward Streeter, humorist
• April 28 – Richard Hughes, novelist
• June 18 – Malcolm Johnson, investigative journalist
• September 10 – Dalton Trumbo, novelist and screenwriter, one of the Hollywood Ten
• November 6 – Patrick Dennis, novelist
• December 21 – Munro Leaf, children's author
• date unknown
  • Martín Luis Guzmán, novelist and journalist
  • Robert Speaight, actor, biographer and essayist
  • Yashpal, Hindi novelist

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

• Premio Nadal: Raúl Guerra Garrido, Lectura insólita de El Capital
• Viareggio Prize: Mario Tobino, La bella degli specchi