1992 in literature

Events

August 25 – The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is completely destroyed during the Siege of Sarajevo by the Army of Republika Srpska.

The Goosebumps series of children's horror fiction, penned by R. L. Stine, are first published in the United States.

Fiction

Ben Aaronovitch – Transit

Tariq Ali – Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

Julia Álvarez – How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Paul Auster – Leviathan

Iain Banks – The Crow Road

Clive Barker – The Thief of Always

Julian Barnes – The Porcupine

Greg Bear – Anvil of Stars

Thomas Berger – Meeting Evil

Louis de Bernières – The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman

James P. Blaylock – Lord Kelvin's Machine

Pascal Bruckner – The Divine Child

A. S. Byatt – Morpho Eugenia

Roger Caron – Dreamcaper

Andrew Cartmel – Cat's Cradle: Warhead

Patrick Chamoiseau – Texaco

Paulo Coelho – The Valkyries

Michael Connelly – The Black Echo

Hugh Cook

The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster

The Worshippers and the Way

Paul Cornell – Love and War

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Devil

Scoundrel

Douglas Coupland – Shampoo Planet

Mia Couto – Sleepwalking Land (Terra Sonâmbula)

Robert Crais – Lullaby Town

L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff – The Enchanter Reborn

Elena Ferrante – L'amore molesto ("Troubling Love")

Leon Forrest – Divine Days

John Gardner – Death is Forever

Mark Gatiss – Nightshade

Ann Granger – Cold in the Earth

Alasdair Gray – Poor Things

John Grisham – The Pelican Brief

Hella Haasse – Heren van de thee ("The Tea Lords")

Andrew Hunt – Cat's Cradle: Witchmark

Simon Ings – Hot Head

P. D. James – The Children of Men

John Kessel – Meeting in Infinity

Stephen King

Dolores Claiborne

Gerald's Game

Patrick McCabe – The Butcher Boy

Val McDermid – Dead Beat

Ian McEwan – Black Dogs

Terry McMillan – Waiting to Exhale

Javier Marías – A Heart So White (Corazón tan blanco)

Andrés L. Mateo – La Balada de Alfonsina Bairán

Rohinton Mistry – Tales from Firozsha Baag

Caitlin Moran – The Chronicles of Narmo

Toni Morrison – Jazz

Michael Ondaatje – The English Patient

Ellis Peters – The Holy Thief

Marc Platt – Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible

Terry Pratchett

Lords and Ladies

Small Gods

Anne Rice – The Tale of the Body Thief

Mordecai Richler – Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!

Jennifer Roberson – Lady of the Forest

W. G. Sebald – The Emigrants (Die Ausgewanderten: Vier lange Erzählungen)

Gail Sheehy – Silent Passage

Sidney Sheldon – The Stars Shine Down

Michael Slade – Cutthroat

Danielle Steel

Jewels

Mixed Blessings

Neal Stephenson – Snow Crash

Adam Thorpe – Ulverton

Sue Townsend – The Queen and I

Rose Tremain – Sacred Country

Barry Unsworth – Sacred Hunger

Gore Vidal – Live from Golgotha: The Gospel according to Gore Vidal

Vernor Vinge – A Fire Upon the Deep

Robert James Waller – The Bridges of Madison County

Connie Willis – Doomsday Book

Timothy Zahn – Dark Force Rising

Roger Zelazny and Thomas Thurston Thomas – Flare

Children and young people

Pamela Allen – Belinda

Chris Van Allsburg - The Widow's Broom

Joaquín Araújo (with Willi Glasauer) – ¡Viva la Vida! Fraternidad con la Naturaleza|Long Live Life!: The Fraternity with Nature and the Natural World

Gillian Cross – The Great Elephant Chase

Anne Fine – Flour Babies

Jamila Gavin – The Wheel of Surya (first in the Surya trilogy)

Rumer Godden

Great Grandfather's House

Listen to the Nightingale

Virginia Hamilton (with Jerry Pinkney) – Drylongso

William Mayne – Low Tide

Hilary McKay – The Exiles

Michael Morpurgo – Waiting for Anya

Barry Moser – Polly Vaughn: A Traditional British Ballad

Jim Murphy – The Long Road to GETTYSBURG

Mary Norton – The Borrowers (first in the eponymous series of six novels)

Gloria Jean Pinkney – Back Home

Marjorie W. Sharmat – Nate the Great and the Stolen Base

Drama

Herb Gardner – Conversations with My Father

Peter Handke – Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other)

David Mamet – Oleanna

Louis Nowra – Così

Michael Wall – Women Laughing

Poetry

Ben Okri – An African Elegy

Non-fiction

Karen Armstrong – Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet

Esther Delisle – The Traitor and the Jew (Le traître et le Juif: Lionel Groulx, le Devoir et le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929–1939)

Daniel Dennett – Consciousness Explained

Eamon Duffy – The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400 to c. 1580

Gerina Dunwich – Secrets of Love Magick

John Gray – Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

Elizabeth Hay – The Only Snow in Havana

Nick Hornby – Fever Pitch

Andrew Morton – Diana: Her True Story

Mark E. Neely, Jr. – The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties

Liza Potvin – White Lies (for my mother)

Léon Werth (died 1955) – 33 Jours (written 1940)

Births

April 18 – Alexandra Adornetto, Australian children's novelist

Deaths

January 4 – Alejandro Carrión, Ecuadorian poet and journalist (born 1915)

January 9 – Bill Naughton, Irish-born English playwright and novelist (born 1910)

January 4 – John Sparrow, English literary scholar (born 1906)

January 28 – Dora Birtles, Australian novelist, poet and children's writer (born 1903)

February 10 – Alex Haley, African American writer (born 1921)

February 16

Angela Carter, English novelist (lung cancer, born 1940)

George MacBeth, Scottish poet and novelist (motor neurone disease, born 1932)

April 6 – Isaac Asimov, American science fiction author (born 1920)

April 21 – Väinö Linna, Finnish novelist (born 1920)

April 28 – Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck), American novelist (born 1918)

May 22 – Elizabeth David, English cookery writer (born 1913)

July 6 – Mary Q. Steele, American novelist (born 1922)

July 22 – Reginald Bretnor, American science fiction writer (born 1911)

July 23 – Robert Liddell, English biographer, novelist and poet (born 1908)

September 5 – Fritz Leiber, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (born 1910)

August 29 – Mary Norton, English children's writer (born 1903)

November 7 – Richard Yates, American novelist and short-story writer (emphysema, born 1926)

December 22 – Ted Willis, English TV dramatist (born 1914)

December 25 – Monica Dickens, English novelist (born 1915)

December 27 – Kay Boyle, American writer, educator and activist (born 1902)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Derek Walcott

Camões Prize: Vergílio Ferreira

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Fotini Epanomitis, The Mule's Foal

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Robert Harris, Jane, Interlinear and Other Poems

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Elizabeth Riddell, Selected Poems

Mary Gilmore Prize: Alison Croggon, This is the Stone

Miles Franklin Award: Tim Winton, Cloudstreet

Canada

See 1992 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Marie Wadden, Nitassinan: The Innu Struggle to Reclaim Their Homeland 

France

Prix Goncourt: Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco

Prix Décembre: Henri Thomas, La Chasse au trésor and Roger Grenier, Regardez la neige qui tombe

Prix Médicis French: Michel Rio, Tlacuilo

Prix Médicis International: Louis Begley, Une éducation polonaise

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Anne Fine, Flour Babies

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Rose Tremain, Sacred Country

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe

Cholmondeley Award: Allen Curnow, Donald Davie, Carol Ann Duffy, Roger Woddis

Eric Gregory Award: Jill Dawson, Hugh Dunkerley, Christopher Greenhalgh, Marita Maddah, Stuart Paterson, Stuart Pickford

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Kathleen Raine

Whitbread Best Book Award: Jeff Torrington, Swing Hammer Swing!

The Sunday Express Book of the Year: Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

Forward Prizes for Poetry (first awards): Thom Gunn, The Man with Night Sweats (collection); Simon Armitage, Kid (first collection); Jackie Kay, "Black Bottom" (single poem)

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Hunt Hawkins, The Domestic Life

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Drama: Sam Shepard

Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry: Louise Glück for Ararat, and Mark Strand for The Continuous Life

Compton Crook Award: Carol Severance, Reefsong

Frost Medal: Adrienne Rich / David Ignatow

National Book Award for Fiction: to All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

National Book Critics Circle Award: to Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean

Nebula Award: Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Shiloh

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to Mao II by Don DeLillo

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Tate, Selected Poems

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Robert Schenkkan, The Kentucky Cycle

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: R.S. Jones, J.S. Marcus, Damien WilkinsNonfiction: Eva Hoffman, Katha Pollitt (poetry/nonfiction)Plays: Suzan-Lori Parks, Keith Reddin, José RiveraPoetry: Roger Fanning, Jane Mead

Elsewhere

Premio Nadal: Alejandro Gándara, Ciegas esperanzas