Canadian writer Alice Munro has won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Swedish Academy called her a master of the contemporary short story.
It means Japanese author Haruki Murakami misses out again, though he was considered a front-runner this year.
Outstanding work
The prize for literature is awarded every year, to the 'person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".
106 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since 1901. It was not awarded on seven occasions: in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943 because the Nobel Foundation judged that none of the works under consideration in thos year were found to be of the importance needed.
Former winners have included our own Seamus Heaney - who passed away last August . Heaney won in 1995 for "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"
Samuel Beckett won in 1969 for writing that illustrated "in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation", and George Bernard Shaw took it in 1925. WB Yeats won in 1923.
Other winners over the years were Doris Lessing, Orhan Pamus, Harold Pinter, John M. Coetzee, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded tomorrow.
