STOCKHOLM, Oct 13: British playwright Harold Pinter, a master of sparse dialogue and menacing silences who has been an outspoken critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, was the surprise winner of the Nobel literature prize on Thursday.

The 75-year-old Londoner, son of a Jewish dressmaker, is one of Britain’s best-known dramatists for plays like ‘The Birthday Party’ and ‘The Caretaker’, whose mundane dialogue with sinister undercurrents gave rise to the adjective ‘Pinteresque’.

An intimidating presence with bushy eyebrows and a rich voice, he was described by Swedish Academy head Horace Engdahl, who announced the prize, as ‘the towering figure’ in English drama in the second half of the 20th century.

Pinter said in a television interview he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the news: “I haven’t had time to think about it, but I am very, very moved. It was something I did not expect at all at any time.”

Asked why he had won, Pinter mused: “I wonder, I wonder.”

Critics called him an unexpected but deserving choice for the 10 million crown ($1.28 million) prize — the second Nobel this month with an anti-US flavour, after the Peace Prize for the UN nuclear watchdog, which is criticized by Washington.

A human rights campaigner, Pinter has likened US President George Bush’s administration to the Nazis and called British PM Tony Blair a ‘mass murderer’ for invading Iraq.—Reuters