British novelist Doris Lessing won this year's Nobel Prize for a body of work that delved into human relationships and inspired a generation of feminist writers, the Swedish Academy said yesterday.
The academy, which awards the prestigious US$1.54 million-prize, called 87-year-old Lessing an "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."
She was the 34th woman to win a Nobel and the 11th to take the literature award. The awards began in 1901.
"We are absolutely delighted because it is so well deserved," literary agent Jonathan Clowes said.
Lessing, who was shopping when the news of her Nobel broke and learned of it from reporters, said the prize had dealt her the literary equivalent of the best possible hand in poker.
"I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot," she told reporters outside her London home. "It's a royal flush."
Lessing debuted as a novelist with The Grass is Singing in 1950, a book that examined the relationship between a white farmer's wife and her black servant.
Her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook was widely considered her breakthrough work.
"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 academy said.
She was born to British parents in what was then called Persia.
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