# 1974 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1974.

## Events

* February – Novelist Juan Carlos Onetti is one of a group arrested 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.
* February 12 – After 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.
* August 8 – The first of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is published as a serial in The Pacific Sun (Marin County, California).
* October 21 – New Guildhall Library opens in the City of London.
* unknown dates
** The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
** German writer Uwe Johnson moves to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey.

## New books
### Fiction

* Eric Ambler – Doctor Frigo
* Kingsley Amis – Ending Up
* René Barjavel – Les Dames à la licorne
* 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"
* Agatha Christie – Poirot's Early Cases
* 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
* Imil Habibi – The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل, Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-gharībah fī 'khtifāʾ Saʿīd Abī 'l-Naḥsh al-Mutashāʾil)
* John Hawkes – Death Sleep
* Joseph Heller – Something Happened
* James Herbert – The Rats
* Hammond Innes – North Star
* Anna Kavan – Let Me Alone
* Stephen King – Carrie
* Manuel Mujica Láinez
** El laberinto
** El viaje de los siete demonios
* Derek Lambert
** Blackstone and the Scourge of Europe
** The Yermakov Transfer
* 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
* Ngaio Marsh – Black as He's Painted
* Colleen McCullough – Tim
* Nicholas Meyer – The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
* James A. Michener – Centennial
* Elsa Morante – La Storia (History. A Novel, 1978)
* Gerald Murnane – Tamarisk Row
* 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
* Ellen Raskin – Figgs & Phantoms
* Ishmael Reed – The Last Days of Louisiana Red
* Brigitte Reimann (died 1973) – Franziska Linkerhand
* Harold Robbins – The Pirate
* Fran Ross – Oreo
* Leonardo Sciascia – Todo modo
* Tom Sharpe – Porterhouse Blue
* Sidney Sheldon – The Other Side of Midnight
* C. P. Snow – In Their Wisdom

### Children and young people

* Richard Adams – Shardik
* Stan and Jan Berenstain – The Berenstain Bears' New Baby
* Robert Cormier – The Chocolate War
* Paula Danziger – The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
* Fynn (Sydney Hopkins) – Mister God, This Is Anna
* Virginia Hamilton – M. C. Higgins, the Great
* Diana Wynne Jones – The Ogre Downstairs
* Ruth Manning-Sanders – A Book of Sorcerers and Spells
* Jill Murphy – The Worst Witch
* Bill Peet – Merle the High Flying Squirrel
* Miriam Roth – A Tale of Five Balloons (מעשה בחמישה בלונים)
* Richard Scarry – The Best Rainy Day Book Ever
* Jill Paton Walsh – The Emperor's Winding Sheet
* Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Collected Ghost Stories

### Drama

* Nezihe Araz – Bozkır Güzellemesi (An Ode to the Steppe)
* 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
* David Rudkin – Penda's Fen (television play)
* Tom Stoppard – Travesties

### Poetry

* Duncan Bush, Tony Curtis, Nigel Jenkins – Three Young Anglo-Welsh Poets

### Non-fiction

* Maya Angelou – Gather Together in My Name
* Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward – All the President's Men
* Augusto Boal – Teatro del oprimido y otras poéticas políticas (translated as Theatre of the Oppressed 1979)
* Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry – Helter Skelter
* Robert A. Caro – The Power Broker
* David Clark – Social Therapy in Psychiatry
* Shelby Foote – The Civil War: A Narrative – Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox
* The Freud/Jung Letters
* Dumas Malone – Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805-1809
* Robert M. Pirsig – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
* Erin Pizzey – Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear
* Jonathan Raban – Soft City
* Piers Paul Read – Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
* Barbu Solacolu – Evocări. Confesiuni. Portrete (Memoirs. Confessions. Portraits)
* Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (Հայկական Սովետական Հանրագիտարան, Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran; begins publication)
* Lewis Thomas – The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
* Studs Terkel – Working
* Joseph Wambaugh – The Onion Field

## Births

* January 6 – Romain Sardou, French novelist
* January 26 – Shannon Hale, American fantasy author
* February 15 – Miranda July (née Grossinger), American filmmaker, performance artist and fiction writer
* April 13 – K. Sello Duiker, South African novelist (died 2005)
* June 12 – Chika Unigwe, Nigerian novelist writing in English and Dutch
* August 7 – Faisal Tehrani, Malaysian novelist
* August 9 – Ryūsui Seiryōin (清涼院 流水), Japanese novelist
* August 18 – Nicole Krauss, American novelist
* August 23 – Serhiy Zhadan, Ukrainian poet, novelist and essayist
* September 20 – Owen Sheers, Fijian-born Welsh poet, playwright and novelist
* November 4 – Carlos Be, Spanish playwright
* December 26 – Joshua John Miller, American novelist and screenwriter
* unknown dates
** Naomi Alderman, English novelist
** Sarah Hall, English novelist
** Joanna Kavenna, English novelist and travel writer
** Joe Meno, American novelist and journalist
** Roger Williams, Welsh dramatist and screenwriter

## Deaths

* January 20 – Edmund Blunden, English poet and critic (born 1896)
* January 25 – James Pope-Hennessy, English biographer (murdered, born 1916)
* January 29
** H. E. Bates, English novelist (born 1905)
** Sheila Stuart, Scottish author and children's writer (born 1892)
* February 2 – Marieluise Fleißer, German dramatist (born 1901)
* February 24 – Martin Armstrong, English poet and short story writer (born 1882)
* March 3 – Carl Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian (born 1891)
* March 8 – Buddhadeb Bosu, Bengali poet and writer (born 1908)
* March 19 – Austin Clarke, Irish poet, playwright and novelist (born 1896)
* March 24 – Olive Higgins Prouty, American novelist (born 1882)
* April 14 – Howard Pease, American novelist (born 1894)
* May 9 – L. T. C. Rolt, English biographer and writer of ghost stories (born 1910)
* May 13 – Arthur J. Burks, American writer (born 1898)
* June 2 – Tom Kristensen, Danish novelist and poet (born 1893)
* June 11 – Julius Evola, Italian esotericist, journalist and philosopher (born 1898)
* June 9 – Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan Nobel Prize-winning novelist (born 1899)
* July 3 – Samuel Roth, American publisher (born 1893)
* July 4 – Georgette Heyer, English novelist (born 1902)
* July 16 – Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, Brazilian playwright (born 1936)
* July 29 - Erich Kästner, German children's author (born 1899)
* August 7 – Rosario Castellanos, Mexican writer and diplomat (electric shock, born 1925)
* August 11 – Jan Tschichold, German-born typographer and writer (born 1902)
* August 17 – Emma L. Brock, American children's author and illustrator (born 1886)
* September 11 – Lois Lenski, American author and illustrator (born 1893)
* September 21 – Jacqueline Susann, American novelist (born 1918)
* October 4 – Anne Sexton, American poet (born 1928)
* October 28 – David Jones, Anglo-Welsh poet and artist (born 1895)
* October 29 – Victor E. van Vriesland, Dutch writer (born 1892)
* November 5 – William Gardner Smith, expatriate American novelist and journalist (born 1927)
* November 7 – Eric Linklater, Welsh-born Scottish novelist and travel writer (born 1899)
* November 26 – Cyril Connolly, English critic and writer (born 1903)
* December 14 – Walter Lippmann, American writer (born 1889)

## Awards

* Nobel Prize for Literature: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson

### Canada

* See 1974 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

### France

* Prix Goncourt: Pascal Lainé, La Dentellière
* Prix Médicis French: Porporino ou les Mystèrs de Naples
* Prix Médicis International: Julio Cortázar, Libro de Manuel

### 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

### Elsewhere

* Miles Franklin Award: Ronald McKie, The Mango Tree
* Premio Nadal: Luis Gasulla, Culminación de Montoya
* Viareggio Prize: Clotilde Marghieri, Amati enigmi