Royal Flush

87-year-old British novelist Doris Lessing said she was delighted at winning the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature:"I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot...It's a royal flush."
Her body of work delved into human relationships and inspired a generation of female writers. The academy called her an "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Lessing debuted as a novelist with "The Grass is Singing" in 1950, a book that examined the relationship between a white farmer's wife and her black servant.
Her 1962 novel "The Golden Notebook" was widely considered her breakthrough work.
She was born to British parents in what was then known as Persia and is now Iran.