FRANKFURT, June 17: US writer, critic and playwright Susan Sontag has won the German book trade’s prestigious peace prize for defending free thought, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association announced on Tuesday.

Born in New York in 1933, Sontag was chosen for the prize for “defending the honour of free thought in a world of false images and distorted truths,” it said in a statement.

Sontag is one of America’s most renowned writers, but she was widely criticised for an article published in the New Yorker magazine days after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing,” Sontag wrote.

“The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.”—AFP