Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Swedish Academy said she had won 'for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power'.
Ms Jelinek is only the tenth woman to be honoured. Among her works is the novel The Piano Teacher, which was made into a critically acclaimed film.
Other writers who were mentioned in speculation before the announcement in Stockholm today were Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis, Albania's Ismael Kadare, Czech author Milan Kundera, US novelist Philip Roth and Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer.
