British author Doris Lessing has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. The 87-year-old has been honoured with the 10m kronor (£763,000) award for her life's work over a 57-year career. Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.
Lessing is only the 11th woman to win the prize, considered by many to be the world's highest accolade for writers, since it started in 1901. And she is the second British writer to win in three years, after Harold Pinter was honoured in 2005. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk won last year. 'Visionary power:' The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, described Lessing as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Lessing was born in what is now Iran and moved to Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - as a child before settling in England in 1949.
Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published the following year and she made her breakthrough with The Golden Notebook in 1962.
"The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th Century view of the male-female relationship," the Swedish Academy said. But Lessing herself has distanced herself from the feminist movement.
The content of her other novels ranges from semi-autobiographical African experiences to social and political struggle, psychological thrillers and science fiction.
She has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times - for Briefing for a Descent into Hell in 1971, The Sirian Experiments in 1981 and The Good Terrorist in 1985 - but has never won.
'Out shopping:' Shortly after the Nobel announcement, her agent Jonathan Clowes told the Agence France Presse: "We are absolutely delighted because it is so well deserved. She doesn't know yet. She's out shopping and we are trying to get in touch with her before she discovers it in the news." Later in the day, Doris Lessing met the press informally.
Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, outside her home in London today. Photo:Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated PressIn addition to the Nobel cash prize, Lessing will receive a gold medal and an invitation to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm. She can also expect to see a rise in sales.
Source: BBC NEWS © BBC MMVII
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/world/11cnd-nobel.html?hp
