Britain's Lessing wins Nobel for literature

By Sarah Edmonds and Niklas Pollard

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - British novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday for a body of work that looked unflinchingly at society's ills and inspired a generation of feminist writers.

The Swedish Academy, which awards the 10 million crown ($1.54 million) prize, called the 87-year-old an "epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny".

The oldest person to win a Nobel for literature, Lessing was only the 34th female laureate since the prizes began in 1901 and the 11th woman to take the literature award.

Lessing was shopping when the news of her Nobel broke and learned of it from reporters gathered outside her London house.

She 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 as she sat on her front steps.

"It's a royal flush."

Lessing said an official connected with the Nobels once came up to her at a "very, very formal dinner" in Sweden and told her she would never win the prize.

"Can you imagine the cheek?" she said. "What am I to say? 'Oh dear, I'm so sorry, why don't you like me?'"

CONSIDERED DECISION

Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Lessing's work had been of great importance to other writers and to the broader field of literature.

"She has been a subject for discussion (by the academy) for quite some time, and now the moment was right. Perhaps we could say that she is one of the most carefully considered decisions in the history of the Nobel Prize," he told Reuters after announcing Lessing had won.

"She has opened up a new area of experience that earlier had not been very accepted in literature. That has to do with, for instance, female sexuality."

Academics and writers called the honor well deserved.

"She is a great figure, she certainly deserved it," fellow novelist Umberto Eco, whose books include the successful "Name of the Rose", said at the Frankfurt Book Fair.