1973 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1973.

Events

March 6 – The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded as the Montenegrin Society for Science and Arts in Podgorica, elects its first members.
March – 5 Italian fascists abduct Franca Rame and rape, beat and mutilate her. She and Fo continue to write and tour drama in Italy, although Fo is arrested by police in November.
May 14
*New orthography for the Greenlandic language is introduced.
*François Truffaut's film Day for Night premieres; novelist Graham Greene has a cameo role as an English insurance company representative.
June 21
*The Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in the landmark case Miller v. California, establishing the "Miller test" for determining obscenity.
*Virago Press, registered on June 18 in the U.K. by Carmen Callil mainly to publish classics by women writers, holds its first board meeting; its first book will be published in 1975.
July 26 – Peter Shaffer's drama Equus is premièred in London by the National Theatre company at The Old Vic.
September – Following the overthrow of President Allende by a military regime, book burnings take place in Chile.
September 16 – Chilean poet and playwright Víctor Jara, detained four days earlier as a political prisoner in Estadio Chile and tortured during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, is shot and killed. His last poem, "Estadio Chile", is preserved in memories and scraps of paper retained by fellow detainees.
September 25 – The funeral of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda becomes a focus for protests against the new government of Augusto Pinochet.
December 3 – French police of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire, disguised as plumbers, are caught trying to install a spy microphone in the directors' office of the Paris satirical paper Le Canard enchaîné.
c. December 27 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel The Gulag Archipelago is first published, by the Paris publisher Éditions du Seuil from a typescript smuggled out of the Soviet Union.
unknown dates
*André Brink's novel Kennis van die aand becomes the first Afrikaans book banned by the government of South Africa.
*Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita is first published complete in Moscow, by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura.
*Frank Herbert becomes director-photographer of the television show, The Tillers.
*Robert B. Parker starts the Boston-based Spenser book series with his debut crime novel The Godwulf Manuscript.

New books

Poetry

Allen Curnow – An Abominable Temper and Other Poems
Tomás Rivera – ''Always and other poems''

Non-fiction

Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death
Howard W. Bergerson – Palindromes and Anagrams
Allan W. Eckert – The Court-Martial of Daniel Boone
Antonia Fraser – Cromwell, Our Chief of Men
Nancy Friday – My Secret Garden
Pauline Kael – Deeper into Movies
Christopher Lloyd – Foliage Plants
Peter Maas – Serpico
New York Bible Society International – New Testament, New International Version
Nigel Nicolson – Portrait of a Marriage
Tim O'Brien – If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Bill Owens – Suburbia
John Pearson – James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007
Flora Rheta Schreiber – Sybil
E. F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful
Maureen and Tony Wheeler – Across Asia on the Cheap
Paula Wolfert – ''Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco''

Births

January 1 – Bryan Thao Worra, Lao writer
January 8 – Madhulika Liddle, Indian writer
January 13 – Lois Pryce, Scottish-born travel writer and journalist
February 10 – Núria Añó, Catalan writer
February 21
*Jacob M. Appel, American short story writer and bioethicist
*Mariana Savka, Ukrainian poet, children's writer, translator and publisher
March 3 – Abbas Khadir, German author and poet of Iraqi origin
April 15 – Maria V. Snyder, American fantasy and science-fiction writer
May 10 – Tana French, American-born mystery novelist and actress
May 20 – Natalka Sniadanko, Ukrainian writer, journalist and translator
June 2 – David Bezmozgis, Latvian-Canadian writer
June 16 – Veronica Rossi, Brazilian-American young adult novelist
August 13 – Kamila Shamsie, Pakistan-born novelist
August 18 – Victoria Coren Mitchell, English writer, presenter and poker player, daughter of Alan Coren
November 12 - Jay Kristoff, Australian fantasy and science-fiction author
November 17 – Marianna Kiyanovska, Ukrainian poet, translator and literary scholar
December 20 – Maarja Kangro, Estonian author and poet
December 24 – Stephenie Meyer, American young-adult vampire romance writer and film producer
unknown dates
*Frances Hardinge, English young people's fiction writer
*Ahmed Saadawi, Iraqi writer
*Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Colombian novelist