Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy said this morning.
Born in 1946 to a father of Czech-Jewish origins and a Viennese mother, she is best-known for her autobiographical 1983 novel 'The Piano Teacher', which was made into a movie in 2001.
The Swedish Academy praised "her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power".
She made her literary debut with a collection of poems in 1967 but won wider acclaim in the German-reading audience with her 1975 novel 'Women as Lovers' and 'Wonderful, Wonderful Times' of 1980.
A controversial figure in her homeland, Jelinek belonged to the Austrian communist party from 1974-91. She is the first woman to win the prestigious prize, worth 10 million Swedish crowns (€1.1 million), since 1996.