STOCKHOLM, October 11 (RIA Novosti) - British writer Doris Lessing has been named winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, the secretary for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Thursday.
Lessing, who will turn 87 later this month, was described by the Nobel committee as a writer whose "visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny."
The novelist, whose first book, The Grass Is Singing, was published in 1949, also holds the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature (2001), one of Spain's most important distinctions, "for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes."
In 2005 she was shortlisted for the first Man Booker International Prize.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize, now worth 10 million Swedish crown (around $1.5 million), has been awarded to 34 women. Lessing became the 11th, and the oldest, woman to have received the prize for literature.
