1975 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1975.

Events

• January 1 – English-born comic writer P. G. Wodehouse is awarded a knighthood, six weeks before his death in the United States.
• January – Colin Dexter's detective novel Last Bus to Woodstock, introducing his Oxford police officer Inspector Morse, is published.
• April 23 – Harold Pinter's play No Man's Land is premièred by the National Theatre company at The Old Vic theatre in London directed by Peter Hall and starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.
• April 28 – Harold Pinter leaves his first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, having begun an affair with the married biographer Lady Antonia Fraser on January 8.
• August 12 – With the 20-year time limit stipulated by Thomas Mann at his death having expired, sealed packets containing 32 of the author's notebooks are opened in Zürich, Switzerland.
• Writing under the pseudonym of "Émile Ajar", author Romain Gary becomes the only person to ever win the Prix Goncourt twice.
• Radical Australian poet Dorothy Hewett publishes her collection Rapunzel in Suburbia, triggering a successful libel action by her ex-husband.
• Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel of the A Dance to the Music of Time duodecalogy (begun in 1951) by Anthony Powell is published.
• French literary critic Hélène Cixous coins the term Écriture féminine in her article "Le rire de la méduse".
• Milan Kundera emigrates to France.
• The Petrarca-Preis is founded by Hubert Burda.

Books

Fiction

• Guram Dochanashvili – The First Garment
• Chabua Amirejibi – Data Tutashkhia
• Edward Abbey – The Monkey Wrench Gang
• Dritëro Agolli – Njeriu me top ("The man with the cannon")
• Robert Aickman – Cold Hand in Mine: Eight Strange Stories
• Martin Amis – Dead Babies
• Natalie Babbitt – Tuck Everlasting
• Donald Barthelme – The Dead Father
• Saul Bellow – Humboldt's Gift
• Thomas Berger – Sneaky People
• Thomas Bernhard – Correction (Korrektur)
• Jorge Luis Borges – The Book of Sand (El libro de arena, short stories)
• Malcolm Bradbury – The History Man
• Morley Callaghan – A Fine and Private Place
• Agatha Christie – Curtain: Poirot's last case (written in 1940s)
• James Clavell – Shōgun
• Susan Cooper – The Grey King
• Michael Crichton – The Great Train Robbery
• A. J. Cronin – The Minstrel Boy
• Roald Dahl – Danny, the Champion of the World
• Robertson Davies – World of Wonders
• L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt – The Compleat Enchanter
• Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren
• Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy (Le jeune homme vert)
• August Derleth – Harrigan's File
• E. L. Doctorow – Ragtime
• Max Frisch – Montauk
• Carlos Fuentes – Terra Nostra
• William Gaddis – J R
• Gabriel García Márquez – The Autumn of the Patriarch (El Otoño del Patriarca)
• Romain Gary as Émile Ajar – The Life Before Us (La vie devant soi)
• Rumer Godden – The Peacock Spring
• Arthur Hailey – The Moneychangers
• Thomas Harris – Black Sunday
• Xavier Herbert – Poor Fellow My Country
• Georgette Heyer – My Lord John
• Jack Higgins – The Eagle Has Landed
• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – Heat and Dust
• Stephen King – 'Salem's Lot
• Sheridan Le Fanu (died 1873) – The Purcell Papers
• David Lodge – Changing Places
• Robert Ludlum – The Road to Gandolfo
• John D. MacDonald – The Dreadful Lemon Sky
• Bharati Mukherjee – Wife
• Gary Myers – The House of the Worm
• V. S. Naipaul – Guerrillas
• Tim O'Brien – Northern Lights
• Gerald W. Page, editor – Nameless Places
• Robert B. Parker – Mortal Stakes
• Georges Perec – W, or the Memory of Childhood (W, ou le souvenir d'enfance)
• Elizabeth Peters – Crocodile on the Sandbank (first in the Amelia Peabody series)
• Baltasar Porcel – Horses into the Night (Cavalls cap a la fosca)
• Anthony Powell – Hearing Secret Harmonies
• James Purdy – In a Shallow Grave
• Judith Rossner – Looking for Mr. Goodbar
• Nawal El Saadawi – Woman at Point Zero (Emra'a enda noktat el sifr)
• Paul Scott – A Division of the Spoils
• Anya Seton – Smouldering Fires
• Gerald Seymour – Harry's Game
• Tom Sharpe – Blott on the Landscape
• Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminatus! Trilogy (individual editions)
• M. P. Shiel – Xélucha and Others
• Rex Stout – A Family Affair
• Glendon Swarthout – The Shootist
• Joseph Wambaugh – The Choirboys
• Jack Vance – Showboat World
• Roger Zelazny – Sign of the Unicorn

Poetry

Main article: 1975 in poetry

• Lin Carter – Dreams from R'lyeh
• Leslie Norris – Mountains, Polecats, Pheasants and other Elegies

Non-fiction

• Philip Agee – Inside the Company: CIA Diary
• Kingsley Amis – Rudyard Kipling and His World
• Jacob Bronowski – The Ascent of Man
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages
  • Lovecraft: A Biography
  • The Miscast Barbarian: a Biography of Robert E. Howard
• Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison)
• Paul Fussell – The Great War and Modern Memory
• Paul Horgan – Lamy of Santa Fe
• Frank Belknap Long – Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside
• Philip Roth – Reading Myself and Others
• Paul Theroux – The Great Railway Bazaar

New drama

• Alan Ayckbourn – Bedroom Farce
• Patrick Galvin – We Do It For Love
• Trevor Griffiths – Comedians
• Colin Higgins and Denis Cannan with Peter Brook – The Ik
• Franz Xaver Kroetz
  • Geisterbahn ("Ghost train")
  • Das Nest ("The Nest")
• Stewart Parker – Spokesong
• Harold Pinter – No Man's Land
• Wole Soyinka – Death and the King's Horseman
• Ben Travers – The Bed Before Yesterday

Births

• January 13 – Daniel Kehlmann, German novelist
• February 25 – Carrie Mac, Canadian young-adult fiction writer
• July 19 – Martina Montelius, Swedish playwright
• October 27 – Zadie Smith (Sadie Smith), English novelist

Deaths

• January 15 – Sydney Goodsir Smith, Scottish poet, dramatist and novelist (heart attack, born 1915)
• February 14
  • Sir Julian Huxley, English biologist and author (born 1887)
  • Sir P. G. Wodehouse, English-born comic novelist (born 1881)
• February 20 – Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, Russian author (born 1882)
• March 3 – T. H. Parry-Williams, Welsh poet (born 1887)
• March 7 – Kate Seredy, Hungarian-born American children's writer and illustrator (born 1899)
• March 13 – Ivo Andrić, Serbo-Croatian novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1892)
• May 21 – A. H. Dodd, Welsh historian (born 1891)
• June 8 – Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins), American science fiction writer (born 1896)
• September 20 – Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger), French poet and Nobel laureate (born 1887)
• October 5 – Lady Constance Malleson, Irish actress and writer (born 1895)
• October 22 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian (born 1889)
• November 13 – R. C. Sherriff, English dramatist and novelist (born 1896)
• November 19 – Elizabeth Taylor, English novelist (cancer, born 1912)
• November 27 – Ross McWhirter, English sports journalist and joint compiler of Guinness Book of Records (assassinated, born 1925)
• December 4 – Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher (born 1906)
• December 7 – Thornton Wilder, American novelist and dramatist (born 1897)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Eugenio Montale

Canada

• See 1975 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Romain Gary as Emile Ajar – La vie devant soi
• Prix Médicis French: Jacques Almira, Le Voyage à Naucratis
• Prix Médicis International: Steven Millhauser, La Vie trop brève d'Edwin Mulhouse – United States

Spain

• Premio Nadal: Francisco Umbral, Las ninfas

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Robert Westall, The Machine Gunners
• Cholmondeley Award: Jenny Joseph, Norman MacCaig, John Ormond
• Duff Cooper Prize: – Seamus Heaney, North
• Eric Gregory Award: John Birtwhistle, Duncan Bush, Val Warner, Philip Holmes, Peter Cash, Alasdair Paterson
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium

United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Belles Lettres: Kenneth Burke
• Nebula Award: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great
• Newdigate Prize: Andrew Motion
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Edward Albee, Seascape
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Michael Shaara – The Killer Angels
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Gary Snyder – Turtle Island

Elsewhere

• Miles Franklin Award: Xavier Herbert, Poor Fellow My Country
• Viareggio Prize: Paolo Volponi, Il sipario ducale