1973 in literature

Events

• March 6 – The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded as the Montenegrin Society for Science and Arts in Podgorica, elects its first members.
• May 14 – New orthography for the Greenlandic language is introduced.
• June 21
• *The Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in the landmark case Miller v. California, establishing the "Miller test" for determining obscenity.
• *Virago Press, founded in the U.K. by Carmen Callil mainly to publish classics by women writers, holds its first board meeting.
• July 26 – Peter Shaffer's drama Equus is premièred in London by the National Theatre company at The Old Vic.
• September – Following the overthrow of President Allende by a military regime, book burnings take place in Chile.
• September 16 – Chilean poet and playwright Víctor Jara, 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, "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 trying to install a spy microphone in the directors' office of the Paris satirical paper Le Canard enchaîné.
• c. December 27 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel The Gulag Archipelago is first published, by the Paris publisher Éditions du Seuil from a typescript smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

• André Brink's novel Kennis van die aand becomes the first Afrikaans book banned by the government of South Africa.
• Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita is first published complete in Moscow, 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.

  New books

Fiction

• Nelson Algren – The Last Carousel
• Martin Amis – The Rachel Papers
• J. G. Ballard – Crash
• René Barjavel – The Immortals
• 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
• 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
• Robert A. Heinlein – Time Enough for Love
• Hammond Innes – Golden Soak
• Joseph Joffo – A Bag of Marbles
• 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
• Derek Lambert
• *Beau Blackstone
• *Blackstone's Fancy
• Clarice Lispector – Água Viva
• 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 – 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
• Richard G. Stern – Other Men's Daughters
• 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
• 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
• Roger Zelazny
• *To Die in Italbar
• *Today We Choose Faces

  Children and young people

• Nina Bawden – Carrie's War
• Thea Beckman – Crusade in Jeans
• 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
• Bill Peet – The Spooky Tail of Prewitt Peacock
• Dick Roughsey – The Giant Devil Dingo
• Doris Buchanan Smith – A Taste of Blackberries
• Patricia Wrightson – The Nargun and the Stars

  Drama

• Alan Ayckbourn – The Norman Conquests
• Griselda Gambaro – Information For Foreigners
• Jean Poiret – La Cage aux Folles
• David Rudkin – Cries from Casement as His Bones are Brought to Dublin
• Peter Shaffer – Equus

  Poetry

• Allen Curnow – An Abominable Temper and Other Poems
• Tomás Rivera – Always and other poems

  Non-fiction

• Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death
• Howard W. Bergerson – Palindromes and Anagrams
• Allan W. Eckert – The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone
• Antonia Fraser – Cromwell, Our Chief of Men
• Christopher Lloyd – Foliage Plants
• Peter Maas – Serpico
• New York Bible Society International – New Testament, New International Version
• Tim O'Brien – If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
• Bill Owens – Suburbia
• John Pearson –
• Flora Rheta Schreiber – Sybil
• E. F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful
• Binod Bihari Verma – Maithili Karna Kayasthak Panjik Sarvekshan
• Maureen and Tony Wheeler – Across Asia on the Cheap
• Paula Wolfert – Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco

  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
• May 10 – Tana French, American-born mystery novelist and actress
• 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

• Frances Hardinge, English young people's fiction writer
• Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Colombian novelist

  Deaths

• January 15 – Neil M. Gunn, Scottish novelist, dramatist and critic
• February 22 – Elizabeth Bowen, Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer
• March 6 – Pearl S. Buck, American novelist
• March 18 – Roland Dorgelès, French novelist and memoirist
• March 26 – Sir Noël Coward, English dramatist and humorist
• April 9 – Warren Lewis, Irish author
• April 20 – Elisabeth Hauptmann, German writer
• April 28 – Jacques Maritain, French philosopher
• April 30 – Jirō Osaragi, Japanese novelist
• May 21 – Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian poet and linguist
• June 4 – Arna Bontemps, American poet
• June 9 – John Creasey, English crime writer
• June 30 – Nancy Mitford, English novelist and biographer
• July 11 – Nobuko Yoshiya, Japanese romantic novelist
• July 29 – Henri Charrière, French writer and criminal
• August 1 – Ann Quin, English novelist
• September 2 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English fantasy writer and scholar
• September 23 – Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet
• September 29 – W. H. Auden, English poet
• October 6 – Margaret Wilson, American novelist
• October 28 – Sergio Tofano, Italian dramatist
• November 13 – B. S. Johnson, English novelist
• December 7 – Benn Levy, English playwright and politician
• December 9 – Anthony Gilbert, English crime writer
• December 11 – May Wedderburn Cannan, English poet
• December 14 – Josef Magnus Wehner, German poet and playwright

• Kathleen Lindsay, English-born South African romance novelist

  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