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The year 1974 in literature involved some significant events and new books.
Contents
[Events
- February 12 - Following publication at the end of 1973 of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (Архипелаг ГУЛАГ), the author is arrested for treason; the following day he is deported from the Soviet Union. In spring and summer the first translations into French and English begin to appear.
- October 21 - New Guildhall Library opened in the City of London.[1]
- Novelist Juan Carlos Onetti is among a group arrested and incarcerated by the Uruguayan dictatorship for selecting as a competition prizewinner and publishing in the newspaper Marcha a short story implicitly critical of the military regime; he subsequently goes into exile in Spain.
- The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
New books
- Richard Adams - Shardik
- Kingsley Amis - Ending Up
- Augusto Roa Bastos - I, the Supreme (Yo el supremo)
- Peter Benchley - Jaws
- Hal Bennett - Wait Until the Evening
- Heinrich Böll - The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann)
- Anthony Burgess - The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End
- Andrés Caicedo - "Maternidad"
- Robert A. Caro - The Power Broker
- Agatha Christie - Poirot's Early Cases
- Robert Cormier - The Chocolate War
- Roald Dahl - Switch Bitch
- Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
- Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Lawrence Durrell - Monsieur
- Frederick Forsyth - The Dogs of War
- John Fowles - The Ebony Tower
- Donald Goines - Crime Partners
- John Hawkes - Death Sleep
- Joseph Heller - Something Happened
- James Herbert - The Rats
- Erica Jong - Fear of Flying
- Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone
- Stephen King - Carrie
- Manuel Mujica Láinez
- El laberinto
- El viaje de los siete demonios
- Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
- John le Carré - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
- Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
- Madeleine L'Engle - A Wind in the Door
- H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth - The Watchers Out of Time and Others
- Robert Ludlum - The Cry of the Halidon
- Brian Lumley - Beneath the Moors
- Ruth Manning-Sanders - A Book of Sorcerers and Spells
- Colleen McCullough - Tim
- Nicholas Meyer - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
- James A. Michener - Centennial
- Meja Mwangi - Carcase for Hounds
- Vladimir Nabokov - Look at the Harlequins!
- Edith Pargeter - Sunrise in the West (first in the "Brothers of Gwynedd" quartet)
- Robert B. Parker - God Save the Child
- Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Ellen Raskin - Figgs & Phantoms
- Ishmael Reed - The Last Days of Louisiana Red
- Harold Robbins - The Pirate
- Leonardo Sciascia - Todo modo
- Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue
- Sidney Sheldon - The Other Side of Midnight
- C. P. Snow - In Their Wisdom
- Studs Terkel - Working
- Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman - Collected Ghost Stories
New drama
- Michael Cook - Jacob's Wake
- Dario Fo - Can't Pay? Won't Pay! (Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!)
- Paavo Haavikko
- Ratsumies ("The Horseman")
- Kuningas lähtee Ranskaan ("The King Goes Forth to France")
- Harald Pitkäikäinen
- Ira Levin - Veronica's Room
- Mustapha Matura - Play Mas
- Harold Pinter - No Man's Land
- Tom Stoppard - Travesties
New poetry
- Duncan Bush, Tony Curtis, Nigel Jenkins - Three Young Anglo-Welsh Poets
Non-fiction
- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward - All the President's Men
- Vincent Bugliosi - Helter Skelter
- Shelby Foote - The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox
- Dumas Malone - Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809
- Jonathan Raban - Soft City
- Piers Paul Read - Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
- Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (Հայկական Սովետական Հանրագիտարան, Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran; begins publication)
- Lewis Thomas - The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
- Joseph Wambaugh - The Onion Field
Births
- January 6 - Romain Sardou, novelist
- April 13 - K. Sello Duiker, South African novelist (died 2005)
- August 7 - Faisal Tehrani, novelist
- August 9 - Ryūsui Seiryōin, novelist
- August 18 - Nicole Krauss, novelist
- August 23 - Serhiy Zhadan, poet, novelist and essayist
- September 20 - Owen Sheers, poet and novelist
- November 4 - Carlos Be, Spanish playwright
- December 26 - Joshua John Miller, novelist and screenwriter
- date unknown
- Naomi Alderman, novelist
- Joe Meno, novelist and journalist
- Roger Williams, dramatist and screenwriter
Deaths
- January 20 - Edmund Blunden, English poet and critic (born 1896)
- January 25 - James Pope-Hennessy, British biographer (born 1916; murdered)
- January 29 - H. E. Bates, English novelist (born 1905)
- February 2 - Marieluise Fleißer, German dramatist (born 1901)
- February 24 - Martin Armstrong, poet and short story writer (born 1882)
- March 3 - Carl Jacob Burckhardt, historian (born 1891)
- March 24 - Olive Higgins Prouty, American novelist (born 1882)
- April 14 - Howard Pease, American adventure novelist (born 1894)
- May 13 - Arthur J. Burks, American writer (born 1898)
- June 2 - Tom Kristensen, novelist and poet (born 1893)
- June 11 - Julius Evola, philosopher and author (born 1898)
- June 9 - Miguel Ángel Asturias, Nobel Prize-winning novelist (born 1899)
- July 4 - Georgette Heyer, English novelist (born 1902)
- August 7 - Rosario Castellanos, Mexican writer (born 1925; killed in electrical accident while serving as ambassador inTel Aviv)
- August 11 - Jan Tschichold, German-born typographer (born 1902)
- September 21 - Jacqueline Susann, best-selling American novelist (born 1918)
- October 4 - Anne Sexton, poet (born 1928)
- November 5 - William Gardner Smith, expatriate American novelist & journalist (born 1927)
- November 28 - David Jones, artist and poet (born 1895)
- December 14 - Walter Lippmann, writer (born 1889)
Awards
United Kingdom
- Booker Prize: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton, Holiday.
- Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Mollie Hunter, The Stronghold
- Cholmondeley Award: D.J. Enright, Vernon Scannell, Alasdair Maclean
- Eric Gregory Award: Duncan Forbes, Roger Garfitt, Robin Hamilton, Frank Ormsby, Penelope Shuttle
- Newdigate prize: Alan Hollinghurst
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: John Wain, Samuel Johnson
- Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Ted Hughes
United States[
- Frost Medal: John Hall Wheelock
- Hugo Award: Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
- Nebula Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Paula Fox, The Slave Dancer
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Robert Lowell, The Dolphin
