IRAQ WAR CRITIC WINS NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
By Ramsay Short

The Daily Star, Lebanon
Oct 14 2005

BEIRUT: In the end the winner surprised everyone. Harold Pinter,
the British playwright and fierce critic of the Iraq War, of Israel
and that nation’s treatment of Palestinians, took the 2005 Nobel Prize
for Literature ahead of the bookmaker’s favorites – Syrian poet Adonis
and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

The Swedish Academy, which has awarded the prize since 1901, said
Pinter, whose plays include “The Birthday Party,” “The Dumb Waiter,”
and his breakthrough “The Caretaker,” was a writer who “uncovers the
precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s
closed rooms” and is the foremost representative of drama in post-war
Britain.

Pinter, who has just turned 75, was born in the London borough
of Hackney, the son of a Jewish dressmaker. During his youth he
experienced anti-Semitism, which had been important in his decision
to become a dramatist.

Very much a liberal, in recent years he has been a virulent detractor
of the British and American-led war on Iraq, and a consistent literary
thorn in the side of Premier Tony Blair.

The Nobel jury added Pinter – who even has his own adjective,
Pinteresque, which is used to describe a particular atmosphere and
environment in drama – had “restored theater to its basic elements:
an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the
mercy of each other and pretense crumbles.”

Adonis (real name Ali Ahmad Said), who fled Lebanon in the 1980s and
now lives in Paris, had been the best guess to win the prize among
Nobel watchers with the online betting Web site Ladbrokes giving him
odds of 7-4.

The fiction writer, Pamuk, whose last novel “Snow” received huge
acclaim worldwide, followed close behind Adonis. Pamuk is facing
prison in Turkey after he was charged with insulting Turkish identity
for supporting Armenian claims that they were the victims of genocide
under the Ottomans in 1915.

Earlier this year Pinter famously called the war in Iraq, “a bandit
act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law [and] an arbitrary
military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross
manipulation of the media and therefore of the public.” He also said
it was “an act intended to consolidate American military and economic
control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort (all other
justifications having failed to justify themselves) – as liberation.”

The Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to advance the
Swedish language and its literature, is made up of several writers
as well as linguists, literary scholars, historians and a lawyer,
all of whom serve for life.

Pinter and other Nobel prize winners will receive their awards,
on December 10 at a ceremony in Stockholm. The playwright will take
home $1.3 million.