2006 in literature

Events

• March – The first full-length original novel in the Manx language, Dunveryssyn yn Tooder-Folley is published by Brian Stowell, after being serialized in the press.
• April 7 – Justice Peter Smith concludes in a case of February 27 in the London High Court of Justice against the publisher Random House over the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, that the author, Dan Brown, has not breached the copyright of Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh in their The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The judgment also contains a coded message on the whim of the judge.
• April 7–9 – First Jaipur Literature Festival held in India.
• Summer – Brutalism becomes the first literary movement to be launched through the social networking site Myspace.
• June – Ciaran Creagh's play Last Call, based loosely on the hanging of the murderer Michael Manning in 1954, as witnessed by the playwright's father, is staged in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, where it is set.
• June–September – Elif Şafak is tried for "insulting Turkishness" in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, published earlier in the year, but eventually acquitted.
• June 7 – The final portion of the library accumulated by Sir Thomas Phillipps is sold by Christie's in London.
• July 14 – The Times Literary Supplement reports on the discovery of a missing copy of Shelley's Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, an 1811 pamphlet containing a 172-line poem critical of war, politics and religion; although published anonymously, the poem is thought to have contributed to the rebel poet's expulsion from the University of Oxford.
• July 21 – The writers of America's Next Top Model go on strike while working on Cycle 7, due to be broadcast on the new CW Network in September 2006. The writers seek representation through the Writers Guild of America, which would allow them regulated wages, access to portable health insurance, and pension benefits. These benefits would be similar to those given to writers on scripted shows.
• August 1 – The University of Helsinki library becomes the National Library of Finland.
• September – Museum of Modern Literature opens in Marbach am Neckar, Schiller's birthplace in Germany.
• September 20 – The Writers Guild of America, West, holds a Los Angeles rally in support of the "America's Next Top Model" writers' strike. President Patric Verrone says: "Every piece of media with a moving image on a screen or a recorded voice must have a writer, and every writer must have a WGA contract."
• November 6 – WGAw files an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after "Top Model" producers say the next season of the show will not require writers. In response, Verrone said, "As they demanded union representation, the company decided they were expendable. This is illegal strikebreaking."

  New books

Fiction

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun
• Chris Adrian – The Children's Hospital
• Naomi Alderman – Disobedience
• Martin Amis – House of Meetings
• Margaret Atwood – Moral Disorder
• Muriel Barbery – The Elegance of the Hedgehog
• Brunonia Barry – The Lace Reader
• François Bégaudeau – Entre les murs
• Peter Behrens – The Law of Dreams
• William Boyd – Restless
• T. C. Boyle – Talk Talk
• James Chapman – Stet
• Douglas Coupland – jPod
• Mark Z. Danielewski – Only Revolutions
• N. Frank Daniels – Futureproof
• Patricia Duncker – Miss Webster and Chérif
• Dave Eggers –
• Agustín Fernández Mallo – Nocillo
• Aminatta Forna – Ancestor Stones
• Wendy Guerra – Todos se van
• Katharina Hacker – :de:Die Habenichtse|Die Habenichtse
• Margaret Peterson Haddix – Among the Free
• Rawi Hage – De Niro's Game
• Hiro Arikawa – Library War
• Anosh Irani – The Song of Kahunsha
• Lloyd Jones – Mister Pip
• Torsten Krol – The Dolphin People
• Vincent Lam – Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
• Jon McGregor – So Many Ways to Begin
• David Mitchell – Black Swan Green
• Alice Munro – The View from Castle Rock
• Amélie Nothomb – Journal d'Hirondelle
• Joyce Carol Oates – Black Girl/White Girl
• Heather O'Neill – Lullabies for Little Criminals
• Carolyn Parkhurst – Lost and Found
• Thomas Pynchon – Against the Day
• Christoph Ransmayr – The Flying Mountain
• James Robertson – The Testament of Gideon Mack
• Will Self – The Book of Dave
• Olga Slavnikova – 2017
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Wizard of the Crow
• Lynne Tillman – American Genius, A Comedy
• John Updike – Terrorist
• Mario Vargas Llosa – The Bad Girl

  Children and young people

• Chris Van Allsburg – Probuditi!
• Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson – Peter and the Shadow Thieves
• John Boyne – The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
• Eoin Colfer – Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony
• John Fardell – The Flight of the Silver Turtle
• Jean-Luc Fromental – 365 Penguins
• Julia Golding – Secret of the Sirens
• John Green – Looking for Alaska
• Charlie Higson – Blood Fever
• J. Patrick Lewis – Black Cat Bone: A Live of Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Verse
• D. J. MacHale – The Quillan Games
• David Mitchell – Black Swan Green
• Robert Muchamore
• *Divine Madness
• *Man vs Beast
• Jenny Nimmo – Charlie Bone and the Hidden King
• Garth Nix – Sir Thursday
• Jerry Pinkney - The Little Red Hen
• Terry Pratchett – Wintersmith
• Lemony Snicket – The End
• Dugald Steer –
• Paul Stewart – Freeglader
• Jonathan Stroud – Ptolemy's Gate
• K. J. Taylor – The Land of Bad Fantasy
• Toshihiko Tsukiji and Senmu – Kämpfer
• Markus Zusak – The Book Thief''

  Genre fiction

• Joe Abercrombie – The Blade Itself
• R. Scott Bakker – The Thousandfold Thought
• Steven Erikson – The Bonehunters
• Terry Goodkind – Phantom
• Laurell K. Hamilton – Mistral's Kiss
• Sherrilyn Kenyon – Dark Side of the Moon
• Gregory Keyes – The Blood Knight
• Dean Koontz – Brother Odd
• Tanith Lee – Piratica II
• Scott Lynch – The Lies of Locke Lamora
• Patricia A. McKillip – Solstice Wood
• Zhang Muye – Ghost Blows Out the Light
• James Patterson – School's Out – Forever
• Angie Sage – Flyte
• Darren Shan
• *Bec
• *Demon Thief
• *Slawter
• Catherynne M. Valente – '
• Jeff VanderMeer – '
• Rick Riordan – The Sea of Monsters
• Kunal Basu – Racists
• Bernard Cornwell
• *The Lords of the North
• *Sharpe's Fury
• Debra Dean – The Madonnas of Leningrad
• Charles Frazier – Thirteen Moons
• Michael Moorcock – The Vengeance of Rome
• Naomi Novik – Temeraire
• Sarah Waters – The Night Watch
• Jack Whyte – Knights of the Black and White
• Gene Wolfe – Soldier of Sidon
• James Patterson & Peter de Jonge – Beach Road
• Victor Heck – Downward Spiral
• Stephen King
• *Cell
• *Lisey's Story
• Thomas Ligotti – Teatro Grottesco
• James Robert Smith and Stephen Mark Rainey – Evermore
• Max Barry – Company
• Ben Elton – Chart Throb
• Bobby Henderson – The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
• Maddox – The Alphabet of Manliness
• Carl Hiaasen – Nature Girl
• Vladimir Sorokin – Day of the Oprichnik
• Gilbert Adair – The Act of Roger Murgatroyd
• Robert Baer – Blow the House Down a novel,
• Mary Higgins Clark – Two Little Girls in Blue
• Ranj Dhaliwal – Daaku
• Michael Connelly – Echo Park
• Patricia Cornwell
• *At Risk
• *Book of the Dead
• Clive Cussler – Treasure of Khan
• Jeffery Deaver
• *The Cold Moon
• *More Twisted
• Nelson DeMille – Wild Fire
• Thomas Harris – Hannibal Rising
• Tony Hillerman – The Shape Shifter
• Dean Koontz – The Husband
• Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Played with Fire
• Val McDermid – The Grave Tattoo
• James Patterson
• *Cross
• *Judge and Jury
• James Patterson & Maxine Paetro – The 5th Horseman
• Michael Slade – Kamikaze
• Thomas Sullivan – The Water Wolf
• Andrew Vachss – Mask Market
• Samantha Weinberg – '
• Jack Whyte – The Eagle
• Karen Marie Moning – Darkfever
• Stephenie Meyer – New Moon
• Nicholas Sparks – Dear John
• Danielle Steel – H. R. H.
• Aaron Allston – Betrayal
• Elizabeth Bear – Carnival
• Troy Denning – Tempest
• David Louis Edelman – Infoquake
• Drew Karpyshyn – : a Novel of the New Republic
• Paul Levinson – The Plot to Save Socrates
• Cormac McCarthy – The Road
• Yvonne Navarro – Ultraviolet
• Tim Powers – Three Days to Never
• J. D. Robb – Born in Death
• Masamune Shirow – Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor
• Charles Stross – Glasshouse
• Karen Traviss
• *Bloodlines
• *'
• Peter Watts – Blindsight
• Stephen Woodworth – From Black Rooms
• Timothy Zahn – Outbound Flight

  Drama

• Salvatore Antonio – In Gabriel's Kitchen
• Jacob M. Appel – Arborophilia
• Tanya Barfield – Blue Door
• Howard Brenton – In Extremis
• Gregory Burke – Black Watch
• John Cariani – Almost Maine
• Nilo Cruz – Beauty of the Father
• Brian Friel – Faith Healer
• Richard Greenberg – A Naked Girl on the Appian Way
• Rinne Groff – What Then
• Lisa Kron – Well
• Neil Labute – Fat Pig
• David Lindsay-Abaire – Rabbit Hole
• Itamar Moses – Bach at Leipzig
• :fr:Joël Pommerat|Joël Pommerat – Cet enfant
• Nina Raine – Rabbit
• Adam Rapp – Red Light Winter

  Poetry

Non-fiction

• Chris Anderson – '
• Debby Applegate – The Most Famous Man in America
• Karen Armstrong – '
• Philip Ball – The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science
• Alison Bechdel – Fun Home
• Christopher Catherwood – A Brief History of the Middle East
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran – Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
• Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme – My Life in France
• Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion
• Alain de Botton – The Architecture of Happiness
• Nora Ephron – I Feel Bad About My Neck
• Larry Fassler – Busted by the Feds
• Wayne Federman with Marshall Terrill and Pete Maravich – Maravich
• Al Gore – An Inconvenient Truth
• Glenn Greenwald – How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
• John Grisham – '
• Tsuyoshi Hasegawa – Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan
• Derrick Jensen – Endgame
• Elizabeth Kolbert – Field Notes from a Catastrophe
• Christian Kracht, Eva Munz and Lukas Nikol – The Ministry of Truth
• Rohan Kriwaczek – An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin
• Linden MacIntyre – '
• Larry Miller – '
• Max Nemni and Monique Nemni – Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, 1919–1944
• John Ramsden – Don't Mention the War: How the British and the Germans Survived Bombing in World War II
• Ryan Sager – The Elephant in the Room
• Ruth Scurr – Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
• Richard Sennett – The Culture of the New Capitalism
• Zhi Gang Sha – Soul, Mind, Body Medicine
• Peter Sloterdijk – Rage and Time
• Tavis Smiley – '
• Hywel Williams – Days That Changed the World: the 50 Defining Events of World History
• Trish Wood –

  Deaths

• January 4 – Irving Layton, Canadian poet
• January 16 – Jan Mark, English children's writer
• January 30 – Wendy Wasserstein, American playwright
• January – Hilda Ellis Davidson, English antiquarian and academic
• February 2 – Chris Doty, Canadian dramatist
• February 4 – Betty Friedan, American feminist writer
• February 8 – Michael Gilbert, English crime writer
• February 9 – Ena Lamont Stewart, Scottish playwright
• February 11 – Peter Benchley, American novelist
• February 17 – Sybille Bedford, German-born English novelist and journalist
• February 20 – Lucjan Wolanowski, Polish writer, journalist and traveler
• February 21
• *Gennadiy Aygi, Chuvashian poet and translator
• *Theodore Draper, American historian
• February 22 – Hilde Domin, German writer
• February 24 – Octavia E. Butler, American science fiction writer
• February 25 – Margaret Gibson, Canadian novelist and story writer
• March 27 – Stanisław Lem, Polish science fiction writer
• March 30 – John McGahern, Irish novelist, dramatist and short story writer
• April 3 – Muhammad al-Maghut, Syrian Ismaili poet
• April 6 – Leslie Norris, Anglo-Welsh poet and author
• April 8 – Gerard Reve, Dutch novelist and poet
• April 13 – Muriel Spark, Scottish-born novelist
• April 25 – Jane Jacobs, American urban planning critic and activist
• May 9 – Jerzy Ficowski, poet, writer and translator
• May 16 – Clare Boylan, Irish novelist
• May 18 – Gilbert Sorrentino, American novelist and poet
• June 17 – James H. McClure, South African-born crime writer
• June 28 – Nigel Cox, New Zealand novelist
• July 17 – Mickey Spillane, American crime writer
• July 28 – David Gemmell, English fantasy novelist
• August 16 – Alex Buzo, Australian playwright and author
• August 17 –Shamsur Rahman, Bengali poet
• August 21 – S. Yizhar, Israeli novelist
• August 25 – Silva Kaputikyan, Armenian poet
• August 30 – Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian novelist, 1988 Nobel laureate
• September 1 – György Faludy, Hungarian poet, writer and translator
• September 12 – Edna Staebler CM, Canadian author and literary journalist
• October 13 – Protiva Bose, Bengali writer and singer
• October 17 – Ursula Moray Williams, English children's writer
• October 25 – Paul Ableman, English writer of erotic fiction and playwright
• November 1 – William Styron, American novelist
• November 6 – Nelson S. Bond, American writer
• November 9 – Ellen Willis, American journalist and critic
• November 10 – Jack Williamson, American science fiction author
• November 15 – George G. Blackburn MC, Canadian author
• November 23
• *Jesús Blancornelas, Mexican journalist
• *Richard Clements, English journalist
• November 24
• *William Diehl, American author
• *Phyllis Fraser, American writer, publisher and actor
• *George W. S. Trow, American writer and media critic
• November 27 – Bebe Moore Campbell, American author
• December 21 – Philippa Pearce, English children's writer
• December 26 – John Heath-Stubbs, English poet and translator

  Awards

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Orhan Pamuk

• 2006 Governor General's Awards: see article
• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Belinda Castles, The River Baptists
• Caine Prize for African Writing: Mary Watson, "Jungfrau"
• Camões Prize: José Luandino Vieira
• Compton Crook Award: Maria Snyder, Poison Study
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: John Tranter, Urban Myths: 210 Poems
• Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Francis Chalifour, After
• Eric Gregory Award: Fiona Benson, Retta Bowen, Frances Leviston, Jonathan Morley, Eoghan Walls
• Europe Theatre Prize: Harold Pinter
• Griffin Poetry Prize: Sylvia Legris, Nerve Squall, and Kamau Brathwaite, Born to Slow Horses
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Cormac McCarthy, The Road
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went into the West: The life of R.S. Thomas
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Jaya Savige, Latecomers
• Lambda Literary Awards: Multiple categories; see 2006 Lambda Literary Awards.
• Man Booker Prize: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss.
• Miles Franklin Award: Roger McDonald, The Ballad of Desmond Kale
• National Book Award for Fiction: Richard Powers, The Echo Maker
• National Book Critics Circle Award: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
• Orange Prize for Fiction: Zadie Smith, On Beauty
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: E. L. Doctorow, The March
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Geraldine Brooks, March
• Premio Nadal: Eduardo Lago, Llámame Brooklyn
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Fleur Adcock
• SAARC Literary Award: Maitreyi Pushpa, Zahida Hina, Laxman Gaikwad, Tissa Abeysekara
• Scotiabank Giller Prize: Vincent Lam, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
• Wallace Stevens Award: Michael Palmer
• Whiting Awards: Fiction: Charles D’Ambrosio, Yiyun Li, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Nina Marie Martínez, Patrick O’Keeffe; Plays: Stephen Adly Guirgis, Bruce Norris; Poetry: Sherwin Bitsui, Tyehimba Jess, Suji Kwock Kim