2004 Nobel prize in literature goes to Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian Elfriede Jelinek, winner of &to=http://english.pravda.ru/society/2002/09/09/36186.html' target=_blank>the Nobel Prize for Literature, is an experimental, feminist writer whose works have provoked controversy.

Here are some facts on the novelist and playwright. Born on October 20, 1946, she is a gifted musician and studied piano and composition at the Vienna Conservatory before turning to languages, theatre studies and history of art.

Among her novels are "Die Liebhaberinnen, 1975 (Women as Lovers, 1990); Die Ausgesperrten, 1980 (Wonderful, Wonderful Times, 1994); Die Klavierspielerin, 1983 (The Piano Teacher, 1988); Lust, 1989 (Lust); Die Kinder der Toten, 1995 (Children of the Dead). Her novels have been translated into 18 languages, informs Reuters.

According to Bloomberg, Jelinek, 57, who made her literary debut in 1967, has written plays, novels and poetry, many of which build on an Austrian tradition of "linguistically sophisticated social criticism," said the academy, which picks the winner. She wrote the book that was adapted into the 2001 film "The Piano Teacher."

She 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 cliches and their subjugating power," the academy said on its Web site.

The literature prize, first awarded in 1901, was established in the will of Alfred Nobel, a Swede who invented dynamite. Nobel's will also set up prizes for achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry and peace, worth 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.36 million) each this year.

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards, left only vague guidance about the prize, saying in his will that it should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."