2012 in literature

Events

• January 1 – Copyright restrictions on James Joyce's major works are lifted on the first day of the year, 70 years having passed last year since his death.
• January 20 – British novelist Salman Rushdie cancels an appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, and four other writers leave the city after reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses, which is banned in the country.
• February – James Joyce's children's story The Cats of Copenhagen is published for the first time by Ithys Press in Dublin.
• March – The discovery is announced of a collection of fairy tales gathered by the historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth and locked in a Regensburg archive for more than 150 years.
• April – While attending the London Book Fair, the exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian uses red paint to smear a cross over his face and a copy of his banned book Beijing Coma and calls Chinese publishers a "mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party", after being "manhandled" while attempting to present the book to Liu Binjie at the fair.
• July – Jaime García Márquez tells his students that his brother Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian writer and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, suffers from dementia, which has ended his writing career.
• September 27 – The 50th anniversary of the publication of ecological text Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is noted.
• September 28 – Sue Limb's parody of the Bloomsbury Group, Gloomsbury, begins to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.
• October 24 – Boekenberg, a public library in Spijkenisse, Netherlands, designed by MVRDV, is opened.
• December – The discovery is announced of "The Tallow Candle", a previously unknown story by Hans Christian Andersen found at the bottom of a box in Denmark in October.
• unknown date
• *Precious Timbuktu Manuscripts are evacuated under threat from Islamist rebels by Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara and Stephanie Diakité.
• *An underground library in Darayya is formed in the besieged Syrian city by students.

New books

Fiction (literary)

• Saud Alsanousi – The Bamboo Stalk
• Jacob M. Appel – The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up
• Filippo Bologna – I pappagalli
• Peter Carey – The Chemistry of Tears
• Dan Chaon – Stay Awake
• Emily Danforth – The Miseducation of Cameron Post
• Stephen Dau – The Book of Jonas
• Debra Dean – The Mirrored World
• Elena Ferrante – L'amica geniale
• Richard Ford – Canada
• Ben Fountain – Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• Emily Giffin – Where We Belong
• Mark Haddon – The Red House
• John Irving – In One Person
• Howard Jacobson – Zoo Time
• Adam Johnson – The Orphan Master's Son
• Christian Kracht – Imperium
• Torsten Krol – The Secret Book of Sacred Things
• Mario Vargas Llosa – The Dream of the Celt
• Attica Locke – The Cutting Season
• Ben Marcus – The Flame Alphabet
• Toni Morrison – Home
• Alice Munro – Dear Life
• Chibundu Onuzo – The Spider King's Daughter
• Ron Rash – The Cove
• J. K. Rowling – The Casual Vacancy
• Bill Peters – Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality
• Benjamin Alire Sáenz – Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club
• Neeta Shah – Bollywood Striptease
• David Vann – Dirt
• Richard Wagamese – ''Indian Horse''

Children and young people

• Claire Alexander – Back to Front and Upside Down!
• David Almond – The Boy Who Swam With Piranhas
• Hannah Barnaby – Wonder Show
• John and Carole Barrowman - Hollow Earth (novel) )
• Emily Gravett – Matilda's Cat
• John Green – The Fault in Our Stars
• Jon Klassen – This is Not My Hat
• Josh Lacey – The Dragonsitter
• Inga Moore – Captain Cat
• Rick Riordan – The Mark of Athena
• Maggie Stiefvater – The Raven Boys
• Mary Sullivan – Dear Blue Sky
• Jacqueline Wilson – ''The Worst Thing About My Sister''

Drama

• Ayad Akhtar – Disgraced
• Alan Bennett
• *Cocktail Sticks
• *Hymn
• *People
• Howard Brenton – 55 Days
• Monica Byrne – What Every Girl Should Know
• Lolita Chakrabarti – Red Velvet
• James Graham – This House
• Miho Mosulishvili – My Redbreast
• Suman Mukhopadhyay – Bisarjan
• Theresa Rebeck – Dead Accounts
• Sam Shepard – Heartless
• Anne Washburn – Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
• Florian Zeller – ''Le Père''

Poetry

• Paige Ackerson-Kiely – My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer
• Marilyn Buck – Inside/Out: Selected Poems
• Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – The Qat'aat o Rubaiyat of Zia Fatehabadi
• Jack Gilbert – Collected Poems
• Paul Hoover – Desolation: Souvenir
• Liu Xiaobo – June Fourth Elegies
• Eileen Myles – Snow-Flake
• Lucia Perillo – On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths
• D. A. Powell – Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys
• W. G. Sebald – Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964–2001
• David Wagoner – After the Point of No Return
• Lew Welch – ''Ring of Bone: Collected Poems''

Science fiction and fantasy

• Joe Abercrombie – Red Country
• Daniel Abraham
• * The King's Blood
• * – Caliban's War
• Saladin Ahmed – Throne of the Crescent Moon
• Aaron Allston – Mercy Kill
• Leigh Bardugo – Shadow and Bone
• John Barrowman and Carole Barrowman – Hollow Earth
• John Birmingham – Angels of Vengeance
• Alex Bledsoe – Wake of the Bloody Angel
• David Brin – Existence
• Tobias Buckell – Arctic Rising
• Orson Scott Card – Shadows in Flight
• Samuel R. Delany – Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
• Troy Denning – Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse
• Steven Erikson – Forge of Darkness
• Ian C. Esslemont – Orb Sceptre Throne
• Brian Evenson – Immobility
• Michael F. Flynn – In the Lion's Mouth
• Mira Grant – Blackout
• Jon Courtenay Grimwood – The Outcast Blade
• Robin Hobb – City of Dragons
• Douglas Hulick – Sworn in Steel
• N. K. Jemisin
• *The Killing Moon
• *The Shadowed Sun
• Stephen King – The Wind Through the Keyhole
• Mary Robinette Kowal – Glamour in Glass
• Jay Lake – Calamity of So Long a Life
• Sarah J. Maas – Throne of Glass
• Paul Melko – Broken Universe
• China Miéville – Railsea
• Michael Moorcock – The Whispering Swarm
• Tim Powers – Hide Me Among the Graves
• Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter – The Long Earth
• Hannu Rajaniemi – The Fractal Prince
• Alastair Reynolds – Blue Remembered Earth
• Rick Riordan – The Mark of Athena
• Kim Stanley Robinson – 2312
• Robert J. Sawyer – Triggers
• John Scalzi – Redshirts
• Karl Schroeder – Ashes of Candesce
• Brian Francis Slattery – Lost Everything
• Charles Stross – The Apocalypse Codex
• Brent Weeks – The Blinding Knife
• Daniel H. Wilson – Amped
• Ben H. Winters – The Last Policeman
• Gene Wolfe – ''The Land Across''

Crime, horror etc.

• Ace Atkins – Lullaby
• Laird Barron – The Croning
• Ted Bell – Phantom
• Alex Berenson – The Shadow Patrol
• Steve Berry – The Columbus Affair
• James Lee Burke – Creole Belle
• Lee Child – A Wanted Man
• Lincoln Child – The Third Gate
• Harlan Coben – Stay Close
• Michael Connelly – The Black Box
• Robert Crais – Taken
• Justin Cronin – The Twelve
• Clive Cussler – The Storm
• Nelson DeMille – The Panther
• Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl
• Vince Flynn – Kill Shot
• Seth Grahame-Smith – Unholy Night
• John Grisham
• *Calico Joe
• *The Racketeer
• Philip Kerr – Prague Fatale
• Tom Knox – The Lost Goddess
• Dean Koontz – Odd Apocalypse
• William Landay – Defending Jacob
• Joe R. Lansdale – Edge of Dark Water
• Dennis Lehane – Live by Night
• Elmore Leonard – Raylan
• Robert R. McCammon – The Providence Rider
• Jo Nesbø – Phantom
• Michael Palmer – Oath of Office
• Ridley Pearson – The Risk Agent
• Matthew Reilly – Scarecrow Returns
• Jeremy Robinson – Second World
• James Rollins – Bloodline
• Greg Rucka – Alpha
• John Sandford – Stolen Prey
• Scott Sigler – Nocturnal
• Daniel Silva – Fallen Angel
• James Swain – Dark Magic
• Brad Thor – Black List
• Joseph Wambaugh –Harbor Nocturne
• David Wellington – 32 Fangs
• F. Paul Wilson – ''Nightworld''

Non-fiction

• Marty Appel – Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss
• Alison Bechdel – Are You My Mother?
• Antony Beevor – The Second World War
• Katherine Boo – Behind the Beautiful Forevers
• David Byrne – How Music Works
• Gregor Collins – The Accidental Caregiver
• Susan Cain – Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
• Sean Connolly – The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math
• Charles Duhigg – The Power of Habit
• Martine Ehrenclou – The Take-Charge Patient
• Michael Hastings – The Operators
• Lawrence M. Krauss – A Universe from Nothing
• Mark Levin – Ameritopia
• George Megalogenis – The Australian Moment
• Masha Gessen – The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
• Dan Jones – The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England
• Jonah Lehrer – Imagine
• Rachel Maddow – Drift
• Marilynne Robinson – When I Was a Child I Read Books
• Michael Lind – Land of Promise
• Jonathan Haidt – The Righteous Mind
• E. O. Wilson – The Social Conquest of Earth
• Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy – The President's Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity
• Edward Humes – Garbology |Garbology
• Peter Bergen – Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad
• Steve Coll – Private Empire
• Robert A. Caro – The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
• Warren Littlefield and T. R. Pearson – Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV
• Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein – It's Even Worse Than It Looks
• Tom Holland – In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire
• Callum Roberts – The Ocean of Life
• Douglas Brinkley – Cronkite
• Michelle Obama – American Grown
• Christoph Ransmayr – Atlas of an Anxious Man
• Arun Shourie – Worshipping False Gods
• Amity Shlaes – Coolidge
• Peter Watson – The Great Divide
• Ro Khanna – Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future
• Jim Holt – Why Does the World Exist?
• Michael D. Lemonick – Mirror Earth
• Helaine Olen – ''Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry''

Deaths

• January 3 – Josef Škvorecký, Czech-born novelist and publisher
• January 7 – Ibrahim Aslan, Egyptian journalist and author
• January 19 – Shraga Gafni, Israeli children's author
• January 23 – Maurice Meisner, American historian, author, and academic
• January 28 – Don Starkell, Canadian diarist and author
• January 29 – Damien Bona, American historian and journalist
• January 30 – Bill Wallace, American children's author and educator
• February 1 – Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and Nobel laureate
• February 3 – John Christopher English science fiction novelist
• February 4 – Irene McKinney, American poet
• February 4 – John Turner Sargent Sr., American publisher
• February 21 – Barney Rosset, American publisher
• March 21 – Christine Brooke-Rose, Swiss-born English novelist and translator
• March 25 – Antonio Tabucchi, Italian writer
• March 27 – Adrienne Rich, American writer
• March 28 – John Arden, English playwright
• April 2 – Sarah Dreher, American novelist and playwright
• April 7 – Miss Read, English novelist
• April 8 – Janusz K. Zawodny, Polish-American and political scientist
• April 17 – Leila Berg, English children's writer and activist
• April 26 – Ardian Klosi, Albanian publicist and writer
• May 8 – Maurice Sendak, American children's author and illustrator
• May 12 – Walter Wink, American theologian and scholar
• May 15
• *Jean Craighead George, American novelist
• *Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist and essayist
• May 26 – Leo Dillon, American children's author and illustrator
• June 5
• *Ray Bradbury, American science-fiction and fantasy author
• *Barry Unsworth, English writer of historical fiction
• June 19 – Emili Teixidor, Catalan journalist and author
• June 23 – Marjorie Chibnall, medievalist, biographer and translator
• July 28 – Carol Kendall, American children's writer
• July 30
• *Maeve Binchy, Irish novelist, playwright and short story writer
• *Héctor Tizón, Argentinian writer and diplomat
• July 31
• *Mollie Hunter, Scottish novelist and children's writer
• *Gore Vidal, American novelist, playwright and political commentator
• August 2
• *Amos Hakham, Israeli biblical scholar
• *Sir John Keegan, English military historian and journalist
• *Gilbert Prouteau, French poet and film director
• August 4 – Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer
• August 6 – Robert Hughes, Australian critic and historian
• August 11 – Heidi Holland, South African journalist and author
• August 22 – Nina Bawden, English novelist and children's writer
• September 6 – Horacio Vázquez-Rial, Argentine-born Spanish writer
• September 8 – Jon Tolaas, Norwegian poet and novelist
• September 10
• *Ernesto de la Peña, Mexican writer
• *Hans Joachim Störig, German writer, lexicographer and translator
• September 12 – Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Russian poet
• September 14 – Louis Simpson, American poet
• September 15 – Fred Bodsworth, Canadian writer
• September 20
• *Robert G. Barrett, Australian author
• *Tereska Torrès, French writer
• September 21 – Sven Hassel, Danish novelist
• September 22 – Irving Adler, American author, mathematician, and scientist
• October 7 – Ivo Michiels, Belgian writer in Flemish
• October 21 – George McGovern, American politician and writer
• October 25 – Aude, Canadian novelist
• October 29 – J. Bernlef, Dutch writer
• November 2
• * Han Suyin, Chinese-born novelist
• * János Rózsás, Hungarian writer
• November 19 – Boris Strugatsky, Soviet Russian writer
• November 20 – Ivan Kušan, Croatian writer
• November 22 – Jan Trefulka, Czech writer and dissident
• December 1 – Ahmed Taib El Alj, Moroccan playwright
• December 4 – Vasily Belov, Russian novelist, poet and dramatist
• December 6 – Jan Carew, Guyanese novelist, poet and dramatist
• December 16 – Fan Vavřincová, Czech screenwriter, novelist, and author
• December 28 – Jayne Cortez, African-American poet
• December 31 – Jovette Marchessault, Canadian novelist and playwright

Awards

• Caine Prize for African Writing: Babatunde Rotimi, "Bombay's Republic"
• Camões Prize: Dalton Trevisan
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
• Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award: Gene Wolfe
• Dayne Ogilvie Prize: Main award, Amber Dawn; honour of distinction, Mariko Tamaki.
• Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Joshua Knelman, Hot Art
• European Book Prize: Rolf Bauerdick, Madonna on the moon, and Luuk van Middelaar, Europe's passage
• Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Liao Yiwu
• Governor General's Awards: Multiple categories; see 2012 Governor General's Awards.
• Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction: Candace Savage, A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape
• International Dublin Literary Award: Jon McGregor, Even the Dogs
• International Prize for Arabic Fiction: Rabee Jaber, The Druze of Belgrade
• Lambda Literary Awards: Multiple categories; see 2012 Lambda Literary Awards.
• Man Booker Prize: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• Miles Franklin Award: Anna Funder, All That I Am.
• National Biography Award: The Many Worlds of R. H. Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist
• National Book Award for Fiction: to The Round House by Louise Erdrich
• National Book Critics Circle Award: to Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
• Nobel Prize in Literature: Mo Yan
• Orange Prize for Fiction: to The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Agard
• Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize: Tamas Dobozy, Siege 13
• SAARC Literary Award: Fakrul Alam, Ayesha Zee Khan
• Scotiabank Giller Prize: Will Ferguson, 419
• Whiting Awards: Fiction: Alan Heathcock, Anthony Marra, Hanna Pylväinen; Nonfiction: Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts; Plays: Danai Gurira, Samuel D. Hunter, Mona Mansour, Meg Miroshnik; Poetry: Ciaran Berry, Atsuro Riley
• Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award: Nino Ricci