The Nobel prize for literature has this year been awarded to the Austrian novelist, playwright and poet Elfriede Jelinek.
The Swedish Academy, which has given the award to a European nine times in the last 10 years, cited the "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in her novels and plays," and her "extraordinary linguistic zeal, which reveals the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power" as it announced its decision at lunchtime today.
Jelinek is only the ninth woman to have won the prize since its inception in 1901. The last woman to win it - also a poet - was Wislawa Szymborska from Poland, who received the award in 1996. Other female laureates include Toni Morrison, who won in 1993, and Nadine Gordimer, the winner in 1991.
Born in Mürzzuschlag in Austria in 1946 to a Czech-Jewish father and a Viennese mother, Jalinek made her literary debut with the poetry collection Lisas Schatten in 1967. Her writing took a critical turn after her involvement with the student movements that were prevalent throughout Europe in the 1970s, culminating with her satirical novel We Are Decoys, Baby!.
She remains best-known, however, for her 1988 autobiographical novel, The Piano Teacher. The novel, which tells the story of piano instructor Erika and her dramatic affair with a younger music student, was adapted for film in 2001 by Michael Haneke, and won the Cannes grand jury prize. Her most recent works have marked a return to one of her most fundamental themes: women's seeming inability to live happily and effectively in a world where they are stereotyped and overlooked.
Despite her critical and commercial successes, Jelinek remains a controversial figure in her own country. She was a longstanding member of the Austrian communist party, from 1974-1991, and has frequently criticised her homeland in her writing, depicting it as a realm of death in her phantasmagorical novel Die Kinder der Toten. The academy saw this as a strength, noting that "her writing builds on a lengthy Austrian tradition of linguistically sophisticated social criticism, with precursors such as Karl Kraus, Thomas Bernhard and the Wiener Group". The 18 lifetime members of the 218-year-old Swedish Academy, of whom only four are women, made their annual selection in deep secrecy last week. In his will, Alfred Nobel specified that the prize for literature should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."
The prize is worth 10m Swedish kronor (£760,000).