1992 in literature

This article presents lists of literary events and publications in 1992.

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.^[1]
• The Goosebumps series of children's horror fiction, penned by R. L. Stine, are first published in the United States.

New books

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
• Arthur Conan Doyle (with Peter Glassman and Barry Moser) - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• 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
• 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 (with Marc Simont) – Nate the Great and the Stolen Base
• Ulf Stark – Can You Whistle, Johanna? (Kan du vissla Johanna?)
• Christopher Tolkien (with J. R. R. Tolkien and Alan Lee) - Sauron Defeated
• Judith Vigna – Black Like Kyra White Like Me
• Nancy Willard (with Barry Moser) – Beauty and the Beast

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
• Peter Whelan – The School of Night

Poetry

• Ben Okri – An African Elegy

Non-fiction

• Karen Armstrong – Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet
• Bill Bryson – Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
• Linda Colley – Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837
• 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^[2]
• 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)^[3]
• 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)^[4]
• 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 ^[5]

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 Wilkins

Nonfiction: Eva Hoffman, Katha Pollitt (poetry/nonfiction)

Plays: Suzan-Lori Parks, Keith Reddin, José Rivera

Poetry: Roger Fanning, Jane Mead

Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal: Alejandro Gándara, Ciegas esperanzas

References