1973 in literature

Events

March 6 – The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded as the Montenegrin Society for Science and Arts (Crnogorsko društvo za nauku i umjetnost) in Podgorica, elects its first members.

May 14 – New orthography for the Greenlandic language is introduced.

June 21 – Virago Press, established in the U.K. by Carmen Callil primarily to publish classic books by women writers, holds its first board meeting.

July 26 – Peter Shaffer's drama Equus is premiered in London by the National Theatre company at The Old Vic.

September 16 – Chilean poet and playwright Víctor Jara, having been detained four days earlier as a political prisoner in Estadio Chile and tortured during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, is shot and killed. His last poem, known as "Estadio Chile", is preserved in memories and scraps of paper retained by fellow detainees.

September 25 – The funeral of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda becomes a focus for protests against the new government of Augusto Pinochet.

December 3 – French police of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire, disguised as plumbers, are caught attempting to install a spy microphone in the directorial office of the satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné in Paris.

c. December 27 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel The Gulag Archipelago (Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, written 1958–1968) is first published, by the Paris publisher Éditions du Seuil from a typescript smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

Book burnings in Chile.

André Brink's novel Kennis van die aand ("Looking on Darkness") becomes the first Afrikaans book banned by the government of South Africa.

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (Ма́стер и Маргари́та) is first published complete in Moscow (in the form left at the author's death in 1940), by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura.

Frank Herbert becomes director-photographer of the television show, The Tillers.

Robert B. Parker starts the Boston-based Spenser book series with his debut crime novel The Godwulf Manuscript.

Fiction

Martin Amis – The Rachel Papers

J. G. Ballard – Crash

René Barjavel – The Immortals

Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death

Thomas Berger – Regiment of Women

Joseph Payne Brennan – Stories of Darkness and Dread

Rita Mae Brown – Rubyfruit Jungle

John Brunner – The Stone That Never Came Down

Ramsey Campbell – Demons by Daylight

Jerome Charyn – The Tar Baby

Agatha Christie – Postern of Fate

Arthur C. Clarke – Rendezvous with Rama

Basil Copper – From Evil's Pillow

Julio Cortázar – Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel)

L. Sprague de Camp – The Fallible Fiend

L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, editors – Tales Beyond Time

Michel Déon – Un taxi mauve

August Derleth – The Chronicles of Solar Pons

Michael Ende – Momo

Paul E. Erdman – The Billion Dollar Sure Thing

J. G. Farrell – The Siege of Krishnapur

Leon Forrest – There Is A Tree More Ancient Than Eden

William Goldman – The Princess Bride

Graham Greene – The Honorary Consul

Elisabeth Harvor – Women and Children 11 stories (revised as Our Lady of All Distances, 1991)

B. S. Johnson – Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry

James Jones – A Touch of Danger

Anna Kavan – Who Are You?

Brian Killick – The Heralds

Dean R. Koontz – Demon Seed

Jerzy Kosiński – The Devil Tree

Milan Kundera – Life Is Elsewhere (Život je jinde, first published in French as La vie est ailleurs)

Robert Ludlum – The Matlock Paper

John D. MacDonald – The Turquoise Lament

Cormac McCarthy – Child of God

Robert Marasco – Burnt Offerings

Toni Morrison – Sula

Iris Murdoch – The Black Prince

Tim O'Brien – If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Robert B. Parker – The Godwulf Manuscript

Mervyn Peake (posthumously) – The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb

Anthony Powell – Temporary Kings

Thomas Pynchon – Gravity's Rainbow

Ernst von Salomon – Der tote Preuße

Irwin Shaw – Evening in Byzantium

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago (Архипелаг ГУЛАГ)

Rex Stout – Please Pass the Guilt

Jacqueline Susann – Once Is Not Enough

Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Jack Vance – The Anome

Mario Vargas Llosa – Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Pantaleón y las visitadoras)

Gore Vidal – Burr

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – Breakfast of Champions

Patrick White – The Eye of the Storm

Rudy Wiebe – Temptations of Big Bear

Venedikt Yerofeyev – Moscow-Petushki (Moscow to the end of the line; first commercial publication, in Israel)

Roger Zelazny

To Die in Italbar

Today We Choose Faces

Children and young people

Nina Bawden – Carrie's War

Thea Beckman – Crusade in Jeans (Kruistocht in spijkerbroek)

Lois Duncan – I Know What You Did Last Summer

Penelope Lively – The Ghost of Thomas Kempe

Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Ogres and Trolls

Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat and the Bush Band

Doris Buchanan Smith – A Taste of Blackberries

Patricia Wrightson – The Nargun and the Stars

Bill Peet – The Spooky Tail of Prewitt Peacock

Drama

Alan Ayckbourn – The Norman Conquests

Jean Poiret – La Cage aux Folles

Peter Shaffer – Equus

Poetry

Allen Curnow – An Abominable Temper and Other Poems

Tomás Rivera – Always and other poems

Non-fiction

Howard W. Bergerson – Palindromes and Anagrams

Allan W. Eckert – The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone

Antonia Fraser – Cromwell, Our Chief of Men

Peter Maas – Serpico

New York Bible Society International – New Testament, New International Version (translated into modern American English)

Tim O'Brien – If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Bill Owens – Suburbia

John Pearson – James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007

Flora Rheta Schreiber – Sybil

E. F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful

Binod Bihari Verma – Maithili Karna Kayasthak Panjik Sarvekshan (in Maithili)

Maureen and Tony Wheeler – Across Asia on the Cheap

Births

January 8 – Madhulika Liddle, Indian writer

January 13 – Lois Pryce, Scottish-born travel writer and journalist

February 21 – Jacob M. Appel, American short story writer and bioethicist

June 2 – David Bezmozgis, Latvian-Canadian writer

August 13 – Kamila Shamsie, Pakistan-born novelist

August 18 – Victoria Coren Mitchell, English writer, presenter and poker player, daughter of Alan Coren

December 24 – Stephenie Meyer, American young-adult vampire romance writer and film producer

Unknown dates

Frances Hardinge, English young people's fiction writer

Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Colombian novelist

Deaths

January 15 – Neil M. Gunn, Scottish novelist, dramatist and critic (born 1891)

February 22 – Elizabeth Bowen, Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer (born 1899)

March 6 – Pearl S. Buck, American novelist (born 1892)

March 18 – Roland Dorgelès, French novelist and memoirist (born 1885)

March 26 – Sir Noël Coward, English dramatist and humorist (born 1899)

April 9 – Warren Lewis, Irish author (born 1895)

April 28 – Jacques Maritain, French philosopher (born 1882)

April 30 – Jiro Osaragi (大佛 次郎, Haruhiku Nojiri), Japanese novelist (born 1897)

May 21 – Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian poet and linguist (born 1893)

June 4 – Arna Bontemps, American poet (born 1902)

June 9 – John Creasey, English crime writer (born 1908)

June 30 – Nancy Mitford, English novelist and biographer (born 1904)

July 29 – Henri Charrière, French writer and criminal (born 1906)

September 2 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English fantasy writer and scholar (born 1892)

September 23 – Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet (born 1904)

September 29 – W. H. Auden, English poet (born 1907)

October 6 – Margaret Wilson, American novelist (born 1882)

October 28 – Sergio Tofano, Italian dramatist (born 1886)

November 13 – B. S. Johnson, English novelist (born 1933)

December 7 – Benn Levy, English playwright and politician (born 1900)

December 9 – Anthony Gilbert, English crime writer (born 1899)

December 14 – Josef Magnus Wehner, German poet and playwright (born 1891)

Awards

Nobel Prize in Literature: Patrick White

Canada

See 1973 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

Prix Goncourt: Jacques Chessex, L'Ogre

Prix Médicis French: Tony Duvert, Paysage de fantaisie

Prix Médicis International: Milan Kundera, Life Is Elsewhere

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Penelope Lively, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe

Cholmondeley Award: Patric Dickinson, Philip Larkin

Eric Gregory Award: John Beynon, Ian Caws, James Fenton, Keith Harris, David Howarth, Philip Pacey

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Heath-Stubbs

United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, John Crowe Ransom

Hugo Award: Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

Nebula Award: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Jean Craighead George, Julie of the Wolves

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jason Miller, That Championship Season

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Maxine Kumin, Up Country

Elsewhere

Miles Franklin Award: No award presented

Premio Nadal: José García Blázquez, El rito

Viareggio Prize: Achille Campanile, Manuale di conversazione