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 in North London, which he has shared with his wife and son – actors Jill Balcon and Daniel Day-Lewis – and at weekends with Kingsley's writer son Martin Amis and others.
• June 4 – The poet Joseph Brodsky is expelled from the Soviet Union.
• October 6–7 – The new Staatstheater Darmstadt is opened.
• October 8 – The play Sizwe Bansi is Dead has its first performance at the Space Theatre, South Africa, before a multiracial audience. Playwright Athol Fugard directs, with co-writers John Kani and Winston Ntshona in lead roles.
• October 10 – Sir John Betjeman is declared Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, the first knight ever to be so.
• "The three Marias", Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, publish in Lisbon New Portuguese Letters , a collection challenging the Estado Novo dictatorship, to immediate success, but banned by censors as "pornographic and an offense to public morals". Its authors are imprisoned for "abuse of freedom of the press" and "outrage to public decency". Only after the 1974 "Carnation Revolution" does their trial end with the authors pardoned and the judge assigning "outstanding literary merit" to the book.

• The Somali Latin alphabet is introduced.

  New books

Fiction

• Dritëro Agolli – The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo
• Srikrishna Alanahalli – Kaadu
• Jorge Amado – Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra
• Martin Amis – The Rachel Papers
• Isaac Asimov – The Gods Themselves
• John Braine – The Queen of a Distant Country
• Taylor Caldwell – Captains and the Kings
• Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
• 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
• Graham Greene – The Honorary Consul
• Peter Handke – A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
• 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
• Derek Lambert
• *Blackstone
• *The Red House
• Halldór Laxness – Guðsgjafaþula
• Ira Levin – The Stepford Wives
• Audrey Erskine Lindop – Journey Into Stone
• 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 – The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away
• Chaim Potok – My Name Is Asher Lev
• Josef Škvorecký – The Miracle Game
• David Storey – Pasmore
• Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Roadside Picnic
• 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
• *The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle
• Robert E. Howard – Echoes from an Iron Harp
• Tove Jansson – The Summer Book
• Michael de Larrabeiti – The Redwater Raid
• Ronald McCuaig – Gangles
• James Marshall – George and Martha
• Graham Oakley – The Church Mouse
• 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
• Winston Graham – The Spanish Armadas
• Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil – Models of Teaching
• Michael Kammen – '
• Richard Mabey – Food for Free
• Elaine Morgan – The Descent of Woman
• 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, Japanese light novelist and game scenario author
• May 27 – Maggie O'Farrell, Northern Ireland-born novelist
• August 18 – Adda Djørup, Danish poet and fiction writer
• September 6 – China Miéville, English science fiction novelist
• September 19
• *Cheryl B, American poet and spoken word artist
• *N. K. Jemisin, American science fiction and fantasy writer
• November 4 – Yiyun Li, Chinese American writer of fiction in English

• Shimon Adaf, Israeli poet and novelist
• Zinnie Harris, British dramatist
• Rabee Jaber, Lebanese novelist
• Charlotte Mendelson, English novelist
• Marente de Moor, Dutch novelist and columnist
• Ben Rice, English novelist

  Deaths

• January 1 – Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, German playwright and poet
• January 7 – John Berryman, American poet
• February 2 – Natalie Clifford Barney, American writer and patron
• February 15 – Edgar Snow, American political writer
• March 4 – Richard Church, English poet and novelist
• March 11 – Fredric Brown, American genre novelist
• April 10 – Laurence Manning, Canadian science fiction author
• May 22 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish-born Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and novelist
• June 24 – R. F. Delderfield, English novelist and playwright
• August 2 – Helen Hoyt, American poet
• August 17 – Alexander Vampilov, Russian dramatist
• August 22 – Ernestine Hill, Australian travel writer
• September 21 – Henry de Montherlant, French novelist, dramatist and essayist
• September 27 – S. R. Ranganathan, Indian mathematician and librarian
• November 1 – Ezra Pound, American poet
• November 29 – Victor Bridges, English genre novelist, playwright and poet
• December 10 – Mark Van Doren, American poet, writer and critic
• December 13 – L. P. Hartley, English novelist
• December 23 – Abraham Joshua Heschel, Polish-born American theologian and rabbi

• Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Palestinian Arab diarist, poet and composer
• Donar Munteanu, Romanian poet and magistrate

  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
• 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