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Roth favourite for Nobel honour Author Lessing wins Nobel honour
(2 days later)
The 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature is due to be announced, with US author Philip Roth and Japan's Haruki Murakami among the favourites. British author Doris Lessing has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Swedish Academy, which keeps the list of nominees secret, will announce the laureate at 1200 BST. The 87-year-old has been honoured with the 10m kronor (£763,000) award for her life's work over a 57-year career.
Roth tops the list of possible winners at bookmakers Ladbrokes, followed by Murakami and Israeli author Amos Oz. Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.
Last year Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who was Ladbrokes' favourite, went on to win the 10m kronor (£763,000) prize. Lessing said she was "very glad" about the honour - particularly as she was told 40 years ago that the Nobel hierarchy did not like her.
Anti-American bias She told BBC Radio 4: "I've won it. I'm very pleased and now we're going to have a lot of speeches and flowers and it will be very nice."
If Roth wins he would be the first US author since Toni Morrison in 1993 to receive the award - considered by many to be the world's highest accolade for writers. They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now Doris Lessing She recalled that, in the 1960s, "they sent one of their minions especially to tell me they didn't like me at the Nobel Prize and I would never get it".
Roth's name has been bandied about by Sweden's literary establishment for many years in connection with the prize. "So now they've decided they're going to give it to me. So why? I mean, why do they like me any better now than they did then?"
However, he has been passed over in favour of others like the UK's Harold Pinter and South Africa's J.M. Coetzee. The author, who turns 88 on 22 October, said she thought she had become more respectable with age.
Swedish Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl dismissed Ladbroke's betting odds as a "mere curiosity". "They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off," she said.
Pamuk was one of the youngest writers ever to win the prize Lessing was told the news by reporters after returning from shopsLessing is only the 11th woman to win the prize, considered by many to be the world's highest accolade for writers, since it started in 1901.
"Most years Ladbrokes' assessment does not correspond with that of the academy, and if they at some occasion happen to coincide, it is pure luck," he said. And she is the second British writer to win in three years, after Harold Pinter was honoured in 2005. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk won last year.
He also dismissed any notion of an anti-American bias in the 18-member academy. The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, described Lessing as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
"Perhaps Americans have been few and far between in recent years, after Toni Morrison. But there is no particular purpose in this," he told the Associated Press news agency. "Oh good, did they say that about me?" she replied. "Oh goodness, well obviously they like me better now than they used to."
"The prize always concerns an individual, not a nation, and we have no principle of distribution when we decide. That would violate the will of [prize founder Alfred] Nobel." Lessing was out shopping when the announcement was made and said she thought a TV show was being filmed on her street when she returned to find TV crews outside her house.
The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency". Lessing was born in what is now Iran and moved to Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - as a child before settling in England in 1949.
It is given to recognise a body of work, rather than an individual book Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published the following year and she made her breakthrough with The Golden Notebook in 1962.
In addition to the 10 million kronor prize, the winner receives a gold medal, and is invited to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm. 'Pioneering work'
He or she can also expect to see a rise in sales and out-of-print works returned into circulation. "The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th Century view of the male-female relationship," the Swedish Academy said.
But Lessing herself has distanced herself from the feminist movement.
The content of her other novels ranges from semi-autobiographical African experiences to social and political struggle, psychological thrillers and science fiction.
She has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times - for Briefing for a Descent into Hell in 1971, The Sirian Experiments in 1981 and The Good Terrorist in 1985 - but has never won.
In addition to the Nobel cash prize, Lessing will receive a gold medal and an invitation to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm. She can also expect to see a rise in sales.
US author Philip Roth had been the bookmakers' favourite for the award. His name has been mentioned in connection with the prize for many years, but he has always been overlooked.