1972 in literature

Events

May 22 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, dies at Lemmons, the home of novelists Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard on the northern edge of London, which he has been sharing with his wife and son, actors Jill Balcon and Daniel Day-Lewis, and (at weekends) Kingsley's writer son Martin Amis, amongst others.

June 4 – Poet Joseph Brodsky is expelled from the Soviet Union.

October 6–7 – New Staatstheater Darmstadt opened.

October 8 – The play Sizwe Bansi is Dead is premiered at the Space Theatre (Cape Town) in South Africa before a multiracial audience. Playwright Athol Fugard directs with co-writers John Kani and Winston Ntshona in the lead roles.

October 10 – Sir John Betjeman is appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, the first knight ever to be appointed to the post.

Fiction

Dritëro Agolli – The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo (Shkëlqimi dhe Rënja e Shokut Zylo, published in the magazine Hosteni)

Srikrishna Alanahalli – Kaadu

Jorge Amado – Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra ("Tereza Batista: Home from the Wars")

Martin Amis – The Rachel Papers

Isaac Asimov – The Gods Themselves

Taylor Caldwell – Captains and the Kings

Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili)

John Dickson Carr – The Hungry Goblin: A Victorian Detective Novel

Angela Carter – The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Agatha Christie – Elephants Can Remember

Brian Cleeve – Tread Softly in this Place

Michael Crichton – The Terminal Man

Robertson Davies – The Manticore

L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, editors – 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction

R. F. Delderfield – To Serve Them All My Days

Frederick Forsyth – The Odessa File

Günter Grass – Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke ("From the Diary of a Snail")

Graham Greene – The Honorary Consul

Peter Handke – A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Wunschloses Unglück)

James Herriot – All Creatures Great and Small

Georgette Heyer – Lady of Quality

George V. Higgins – The Friends of Eddie Coyle

P. D. James – An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

Dan Jenkins – Semi-Tough

Thomas Keneally – The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith

Carl Jacobi – Disclosures in Scarlet

Halldór Laxness – Guðsgjafaþula ("Mantra of God's Gift")

Ira Levin – The Stepford Wives

Frank Belknap Long – The Rim of the Unknown

Robert Ludlum – The Osterman Weekend

David McCullough – The Great Bridge

John D. MacDonald – The Scarlet Ruse

Barry N. Malzberg – Beyond Apollo

Vladimir Nabokov – Transparent Things

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎) – The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away (みずから我が涙をぬぐいたまう日, Mizukara Waga Namida o Nugui Tamau Hi)

Chaim Potok – My Name Is Asher Lev

Josef Škvorecký – The Miracle Game (Mirákl)

David Storey – Pasmore

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Roadside Picnic («Пикник на обочине», Piknik na obochine)

Paul Theroux – Saint Jack

Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Irving Wallace – The Word

Children and young people

Richard Adams – Watership Down

Gillian Avery – A Likely Lad

Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Rumer Godden

The Diddakoi (also Gypsy Girl)

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle

Tove Jansson – The Summer Book

Michael de Larrabeiti – The Redwater Raid

James Marshall – George and Martha (first in a series of seven eponymous books)

Graham Oakley – The Church Mouse (first in the Church Mice series of twelve books)

Bill Peet

The Ant and the Elephant

Countdown to Christmas

Mary Renault – The Persian Boy

Marjorie W. Sharmat – Nate the Great

Judith Viorst – Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Drama

Alan Ayckbourn – Absurd Person Singular

Samuel Beckett – Not I

Hanay Geiogamah – Body Indian

Eugène Ionesco – Macbett

Vijay Tendulkar

Ghashiram Kotwal

Sakharam Binder

Non-fiction

The American Museum of Natural History – An Introduction

Jacob Bronowski – The Ascent of Man

L. Sprague de Camp

Great Cities of the Ancient World

With Catherine Crook de Camp – Darwin and His Great Discovery'

Carlos Castaneda – Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan

Michael Kammen – People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization

Richard Mabey – Food for Free

Robert Newton Peck – A Day No Pigs Would Die

Frances Yates – The Rosicrucian Enlightenment

John Howard Yoder – The Politics of Jesus

Births

January 1 – Maile Meloy, American novelist and short story writer

February 11 – Noboru Yamaguchi (山口 登), Japanese light novelist and game scenario author

August 18 – Adda Djørup, Danish poet and fiction writer

September 6 – China Miéville, English science fiction novelist

September 19 – Cheryl B (Cheryl Burke), American poet and spoken word artist

Unknown dates

Shimon Adaf, Israeli poet and novelist

Rabee Jaber, Lebanese novelist

Marente de Moor, Dutch novelist and columnist

Ben Rice, English novelist

Deaths

January 1 – Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, German playwright and poet (born 1906)

January 7 – John Berryman, American poet (suicide, born 1914)

February 2 – Natalie Clifford Barney, American writer and patron (born 1876)

February 15 – Edgar Snow, American political writer (cancer, born 1905)

March 4 – Richard Church, English poet and novelist (born 1893

March 9 – Violet Trefusis, English writer (born 1894)

March 11 – Fredric Brown, American genre novelist (born 1906

March 14 – Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Italian publisher (born 1926)

April 10 – Laurence Manning, Canadian science fiction author (born 1899)

May 22 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish-born Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and (as Nicholas Blake) novelist (born 1904)

June 24 – R. F. Delderfield, English novelist and playwright (born 1912)

August 2 – Helen Hoyt (Helen Lyman), American poet (born 1887)

August 17 – Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist (drowned fishing, born 1937)

August 22 – Ernestine Hill, Australian travel writer (born 1899)

September 21 – Henry de Montherlant, French essayist, novelist and dramatist (born 1895)

September 27 – S. R. Ranganathan, Indian mathematician and librarian (born 1892)

November 1 – Ezra Pound, American poet (born 1885)

November 29 – Victor Bridges (Victor George de Freyne), English genre novelist, playwright and poet (born 1878)

December 10 – Mark Van Doren, American poet, writer and critic (born 1894)

December 13 – L. P. Hartley, English novelist (born 1895)

December 23 – Abraham Joshua Heschel, Polish-born American theologian and rabbi (born 1907)

Unknown date

Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Palestinian Arab diarist, poet, and composer (born 1897)

Donar Munteanu, Romanian poet and magistrate (born 1886)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Heinrich Böll

Canada

See 1972 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Jean Carrière, L'Epervier de Maheux

Prix Médicis French: Maurice Clavel, Le Tiers des étoiles

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: John Berger, G.

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Richard Adams, Watership Down

Cholmondeley Award: Molly Holden, Tom Raworth, Patricia Whittaker

Eric Gregory Award: Tony Curtis, Richard Berengarten, Brian Oxley, Andrew Greig, Robin Lee, Paul Muldoon

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: John Berger, G

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf

United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for the novel, Eudora Welty

Hugo Award: Philip José Farmer, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)

Nebula Award: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Not awarded

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Wright, Collected Poems

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: Thea Astley, The Acolyte

Premio Nadal: José María Carrascal, Groovy

Viareggio Prize: Romano Bilenchi, Il bottone di Stalingrado