1972 in literature

See also: 1971 in literature, other events of 1972, 1973 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

New books

• August 1914  – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Captains and the Kings  – Taylor Caldwell
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator – Roald Dahl
• Die the Long Day – Horace Orlando Patterson
• Endurance – James L Harris
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
• The Gods Themselves  – Isaac Asimov
• The Great Bridge  – David McCullough
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull  – Richard Bach
• Lady of Quality – Georgette Heyer
• The Manticore – Robertson Davies
• My Name is Asher Lev  – Chaim Potok
• The Odessa File  – Frederick Forsyth
• The Osterman Weekend  – Robert Ludlum
• The Politics of Jesus  – John Howard Yoder
• Semi-Tough  – Dan Jenkins
• Two from Galilee  – Marjorie Holmes
• The Word  – Irving Wallace
• Watership Down – Richard Adams

Births

• September 6 – China Miéville, English writer

Deaths

• February 15 – Edgar Snow, journalist
• March 9 – Violet Trefusis, English writer and lover of Vita Sackville-West
• April – Laurence Manning, science fiction author
• May 22 – Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate
• June 24 – R. F. Delderfield, novelist and historian
• August 22 – Ernestine Hill, travel writer
• September 21 – Henry de Montherlant, essayist
• September 27 – S. R. Ranganathan, influential librarian
• December 10 – Mark Van Doren, poet
• December 13 – L. P. Hartley, novelist
• December 23 – Abraham Joshua Heschel, theologian
• date unknown – Richard Church, poet and novelist

Awards

• Booker Prize: John Berger, G
• See 1972 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Carnegie Medal: Richard Adams, Watership Down
• 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. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Heinrich Böll
• Prix Goncourt: Jean Carrière, L'Epervier de Maheux
• Prix Médicis: Maurice Clavel, Le Tiers des étoiles
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: James Wright, Collected Poems
• Viareggio Prize: Romano Bilenchi, Il bottone di Stalingrado