Events

• Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation.
• June 1 - Sasebo, Nagasaki - Controversy briefly surrounded Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, when an 11-year-old fan of the story (known on the internet as Nevada-tan) murdered her classmate, 12-year-old Satomi Mitarai, in a way that mimicked a scene from the story. [http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/features/0412/27sasebo.html
• The Novel was published.

New books

• Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror - Richard A. Clarke
• Al Capone Does My Shirts - Gennifer Choldenko
• Author, Author - David Lodge
• The Big Why - Michael Winter
• The Body of Jonah Boyd - David Leavitt
• The Cestus Deception - Steven Barnes
• Conspiracy Files - David Southwell
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
• The Confession - Olen Steinhauer
• The Confusion - Neal Stephenson (Vol. II of the Baroque Cycle)
• The Dark Tower - Stephen King
• The Dust Diaries - Owen Sheers
• Eastern Standard Tribe - Cory Doctorow
• Edenborn - Nick Sagan
• Eleanor Rigby - Douglas Coupland
• Eragon - Christopher Paolini
• Escaping the Giant Wave - Peg Kehret
• Free Culture - Lawrence Lessig
• Gregor the Overlander - Suzanne Collins
• The Grim Grotto - Lemony Snicket
• The Hanging of Angelique - Afua Cooper
• Heir Apparent - Vivian Vande Velde
• How to Ruin Your Financial Life - Ben Stein
• In the Place of Last Things - Michael Helm
• ''Jedi Trial - David Sherman & Dan Cragg
• Layer Cake - J.J. Connelly
• An Anthology Of Horror Edited by Ebooksondisk.com
• TABLOID PURPOSES -- Edited By Nickolaus A. Pacione
• The Inner Circle - T. C. Boyle
• The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
• Love Monkey - Kyle Smith
• Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
• Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
• My Name Is Legion - A. N. Wilson
• Origins of the Crash - Roger Lowenstein
• Past Mortem - Ben Elton
• The Pentagon's New Map - Thomas P.M. Barnett
• A Planet for the President - Alistair Beaton
• The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
• The Rocklopedia Fakebandica - T. Mike Childs
• Runaway - Alice Munro
• Sahara Special - Esmé Raji Codell
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals - J. Maarten Troost
• Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen
• Song of Susannah - Stephen King
• Hard Contact - Karen Traviss
• True Stories - Chuck Palahniuk
• The System of the World - Neal Stephenson (Vol. III of the Baroque Cycle)
• Ten Men - Alexandra Gray
• The Novel - Michael Szymczyk
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - David Michaels
• When My Name Was Keoke - Linda Sue Park
• A Year in the Merde - Stephen Clarke
• Dark Rendezvous - Sean Stewart

New drama

• Alan Bennett - The History Boys
• John Patrick Shanley - Doubt

Non-fiction

• Flora Fraser - Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III
• Leonie Frieda - Catherine de' Medici
• Miranda Seymour - In Search of a Motor-Racing Legend
• Ben Stein - Can America Survive? The Rage of the Left, The Truth, and What to Do About It
• Jon Stewart and writers of The Daily Show - A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction''

Deaths

January-February

• January 4, John Toland, author and historian
• January 4, Joan Aiken, author of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
• January 4, Jeff Nuttall, poet, publisher, and author of Bomb Culture
• January 10, Alexandra Ripley, author of Scarlett
• January 10/11?, Spalding Gray, actor and author
• January 13, Zeno Vendler, philosopher and linguist
• January 14, Jack Cady, science fiction author
• January 15, Olivia Goldsmith, author
• January 15, Alex Barris, Canadian actor and writer
• January 22, George Woodbridge, illustrator
• January 29, M. M. Kaye, author of The Far Pavilions
• 29 January, Janet Frame, New Zealand author
• February 2, Alan Bullock, historian
• February 4, Hilda Hilst, Brazilian novelist
• February 5, Frances Partridge, last surviving member of the Bloomsbury group
• February 7, Norman Thelwell, cartoonist
• February 8, Julius Schwartz, comic book and pulp magazine editor
• February 16, Bill Oakley, comic book letterer
• February 19, Hermann Krings, German philosopher
• February 27, Paul Sweezy, economist and founding editor of the Monthly Review
• February 28, Daniel J. Boorstin, historian
• February 29, Jerome Lawrence, playwright

March-August

• March 9, Albert Mol, author, actor, and dancer
• March 29 - Peter Ustinov, actor, dramatist and memoirist (b. 1921)
• March 30
  • Dr Michael King OBE New Zealand historian, author and biographer
  • Alistair Cooke, English-born journalist and broadcaster (b. 1908)
• May 2, Paul Guimard, French writer
• April 26, Hubert Selby, Jr., American author
• July 1, Peter Barnes, playwright
• July 8, Paula Danziger, young adult novelist

September-December

• September 18 - Norman Cantor, Canadian historian (b. 1929)
• September 24 - Françoise Sagan, French writer (b. 1935)
• October 16, Vincent Brome, English biographer and novelist
• October 20, Anthony Hecht, American poet
• November 24, Arthur Hailey, Canadian author
• December 2 - Mona Van Duyn, American poet (b. 1921)
• December 8, Jackson Mac Low, American poet
• December 12, Phaswane Mpe, South African novelist (b. 1970)
• December 18 - Anthony Sampson, British journalist and biographer (b. 1926)
• December 28, Susan Sontag, American novelist (b. 1933)

Awards

• Giller Prize: Alice Munro, Runaway
• Governor General's Awards: See 2004 Governor General's Awards
• Griffin Poetry Prize: Anne Simpson, Loop and August Kleinzahler, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
• Hugo Award for Best Novel: Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
• Man Booker Prize: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Elfriede Jelinek
• Orange Prize for Fiction: Andrea Levy, Small Island
• American Literary Award for Fiction: Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

See also

• list of years in literature

2004 books | 2004

Literaturjahr 2004 | 2004 en littérature | Kultur i 2004 | 2004 - literatura | Litteraturåret 2004