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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1992.

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Events

  • July – The Goosebumps series of children's horror fiction, penned by R. L. Stine, is first published in the United States.
  • August – An attempt is made to set fire to the National Library of Abkhazia in Sukhumi during the War in Abkhazia by Georgian forces.
  • August 25 – The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is annihilated during the Siege of Sarajevo by the Army of Republika Srpska.
  • September – Michael Ondaatje's historiographic metafiction The English Patient is published in Canada. It will win The Golden Man Booker in 2018.

New books

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Fiction

  • Ben Aaronovitch – Transit
  • Tariq Ali – Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
  • 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
  • Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Women Who Run with the Wolves
  • Elena Ferrante – Troubling Love (L'amore molesto
  • Tibor Fischer – Under the Frog
  • Leon Forrest – Divine Days
  • John Gardner – Death Is Forever
  • Neil Gaiman – The Sandman: Season of Mists (graphic novel; volume 4 of The Sandman series)
  • Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean – Signal to Noise (graphic novel)
  • Cristina García – Dreaming in Cuban
  • 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)
  • Victor Headley – Yardie
  • Andrew Hunt – Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark
  • Simon Ings – Hot Head
  • P. D. James – The Children of Men
  • Denis Johnson – Jesus' Son (short story collection)
  • John Kessel – Meeting in Infinity
  • Stephen King
  • Dolores Claiborne
  • Gerald's Game
  • Patrick McCabe – The Butcher Boy
  • Cormac McCarthy – All the Pretty Horses (book 1 of The Border Trilogy)
  • 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
  • Robert Schneider – Schlafes Bruder
  • Patricia Schonstein – A Time of Angels
  • 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
  • John Updike – Memories of the Ford Administration
  • 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
  • Juan Eduardo Zúñiga
  • El último día del mundo (The last day of the world)
  • Misterios de las noches y los días (Mysteries of the nights and days; short stories)

Children and young people

  • Pamela Allen – Belinda
  • Chris Van Allsburg – The Widow's Broom
  • Gillian Cross – The Great Elephant Chase
  • Garry Disher – The Bamboo Flute
  • 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
  • Gordon Korman – The Twinkie Squad
  • William Mayne – Low Tide
  • Gerald McDermott – Zomo The Rabbit: A Trickster Tale From West Africa
  • Hilary McKay – The Exiles
  • Michael Morpurgo – Waiting for Anya
  • Barry Moser – Polly Vaughn: A Traditional British Ballad
  • Jim Murphy – The Long Road to Gettysburg
  • Barbara Park – Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus (first in the Junie B. Jones series)
  • Marcus Pfister – The Rainbow Fish (Der Regenbogenfisch)
  • Gloria Jean Pinkney (with Jerry 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
  • Martin Waddell &ndash; Owl Babies
  • Nancy Willard (with Barry Moser) – Beauty and the Beast
  • Douglas Wood – Old Turtle
  • Susan Meddaugh – Martha Speaks

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
  • Zlatko Topčić – Musa And The Goat (radio version)
  • Michael Wall – Women Laughing
  • Peter Whelan – The School of Night

Poetry

  • Ben Okri – An African Elegy

Non-fiction

  • Nelson Algren (died 1981) – America Eats (travel book, written 1930s)
  • 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
  • Joan Didion – After Henry
  • Eamon Duffy – The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400 to c. 1580
  • Gerina Dunwich – Secrets of Love Magick
  • Christiane Éluère – The Celts: First Masters of Europe
  • John Gray – Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
  • Elizabeth Hay – The Only Snow in Havana
  • Nick Hornby – Fever Pitch
  • Charles Jennings – Up North
  • Neil Lyndon – No More Sex War: The Failures of Feminism
  • 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)
  • Léon Werth (died 1955) – 33 Jours (written 1940)
  • Michael Jackson – Dancing the Dream

Anthologies

  • Margaret Busby (ed.) – Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present

Births

  • April 14 – Naoise Dolan, Irish novelist
  • August 12 – Naoki Higashida, Japanese autistic author
  • September 18 – Jidanun Lueangpiansamut, Thai writer
  • October 5 – Rupi Kaur, Indian-born Canadian poet, illustrator, photographer, and author
  • October 30 – Édouard Louis, French writer
  • November 11 – Aya Mansour, Iraqi poet, writer, and journalist

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 14 – Irakli Abashidze, Georgian poet, literary scholar and politician (born 1909)
  • 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 4 – Vintilă Horia, Romanian writer (born 1915)
  • 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)
  • Rosemary Sutcliff, English children's historical novelist (born 1902)
  • August 4 – Seichō Matsumoto, Japanese mystery writer and journalist (born 1909)
  • August 29 – Mary Norton, English children's writer (born 1903)
  • September 5 – Fritz Leiber, American writer of fantasy and science fiction (born 1910)
  • November 7 – Richard Yates, American novelist and short-story writer (emphysema, born 1926)
  • November 17 – Audre Lorde, American poet, writer and feminist (born 1934)
  • 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 in 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&nbsp;

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

  • Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Amos Oz
  • Premio Nadal: Alejandro Gándara, Ciegas esperanzas

References

  • Popular Books of 1992 at Goodreads