American poet Louise Glück has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a move that returns the prestigious honour to safer ground after recent years of controversy.
The Swedish Academy praised Ms Glück, a former US poet laureate, for her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. The judges celebrated her ability to take inspiration from classical myths and her use of everyday diction in clear, playful and technically accomplished verse that draws on the autobiographical without being confessional.
Ms Glück, 77, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1992 collection The Wild Iris and the 2014 National Book Award, was “surprised” to be chosen, according to the academy. Many Nobel Prize watchers had expected the academy would this year look beyond Europe and North America and honour a writer from Africa, Asia or the Caribbean.