In the autumn of her literary odyssey comes the Nobel Prize [Images]. Eighty-eight-year-old British writer Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for her outstanding contribution to literature, which covered feminism to racial discrimination to politics in a career that has spanned five decades.

At 88, Lessing is now the oldest person to win the most-coveted prize in world literature. Incidentally, Lessing, a school drop-out, is only the 11th woman to have won the Nobel Prize.

Saluting the writer and her works, the Swedish Academy described Lessing as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny".

Lessing was born to British parents on October 22, 1919 in Iran. The Golden Notebook is her best-known work, which incidentally labelled her as a feminist, a charge that was vehemently dismissed by the author.

He major works include The Grass is Singing, The Summer Before Dark, The Fifth Child, and Children of Violence.

"The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that inform the 20th century view of the male-female relationship," the academy said in its citation. Reports emerge from Sweden say the author has not yet been informed of the news as "she was out shopping".