AUSTRIA: Austria's Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday for novels and plays that starkly depict violence against women, explore sexuality and condemn far-right politics in Europe.
The 57-year-old writer best-known for her autobiographical novel The Piano Teacher - made into a film in 2001 - was a surprise winner. She is the first Austrian and ninth woman to win literature's highest accolade.
"Of course I am also happy, there is no point in being hypocritical, but I am actually feeling more desperation than happiness," she told the Austrian Press Agency.
"I am not made to be pulled into the public as a person. I feel threatened there." The reclusive writer, said by one editor to "show no mercy either to her themes or to herself", said she would not collect the 10 million crown (€1.11 million) prize in person: "I've been ill and I'm really not up to seeing people."
Her unemotional descriptions of the power play in sex and human relations, and outspoken political views, have alienated many in her native Austria but have also won her respect as a fearless feminist writer who makes bold use of language.
"She has absolute moral and political integrity," her editor at Berlin Berlag publishers, Ms Delf Schmidt, told Reuters at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Born in 1946 to a Czech-Jewish father and a Viennese mother, she studied music at the Vienna Conservatory before making her literary debut with a collection of poems in 1967. But wider acclaim came with the novels Women as Lovers in 1975 and Wonderful, Wonderful Times in 1980.
Prof Gert Mattenklott, a literature professor at Berlin's Free University, said Jelinek's work "campaigned against the sexual subjugation of women and against patriarchal society" in a shrill tone unlikely to appeal to a broad readership. Her critics say she uses obscene, vulgar and blasphemous language and one review of Michael Haneke's film of The Piano Teacher called it a mix of "Schubert, self-mutilation and porn". But publisher Mr Alexander Fest said at the Frankfurt fair that her writing showed "great courage and huge savagery".
Jelinek, who belonged to the Austrian Communist Party from 1974-91, said the award should not be considered "a feather in the cap for Austria", where she courted controversy by tackling its Nazi past and refusing to perform in public after far-right leader Mr Jörg Haider's party became part of a ruling coalition.
Austrian President Mr Heinz Fischer claimed a victory for "Austrian literature as a whole".