The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has been bestowed with the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters. The decision was announced by the Jury in Oviedo today.

The leading figure in Canadian literature and one of the most outstanding voices of contemporary fiction, Margaret Atwood offers in her novels a politically committed, critical view of the world and contemporary society, while revealing extraordinary sensitivity in her copious poetical oeuvre, a genre which she cultivates with great skill.

This candidature was proposed by Rogelio Blanco, Director General for Books, Archives and Libraries at the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

Considered one of the most outstanding novelists and poets on the contemporary scene, Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa (Ontario, Canada). A book lover since very young, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Victoria College, University of Toronto, and then went on to pursue postgraduate studies at Radcliff College, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and at the University of Harvard. She has lectured in English Literature at a number of Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Sir George Williams University in Montreal and York University in Toronto. A full-time writer since 1972, she has chaired the Writers? Union of Canada (1981-1982) and the Canadian chapter of the International PEN Club for Writers (1984-1986).

A truly prolific author, she obtained international recognition with the publication of her novel The Edible Woman (1969), which was followed by Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), Life Before Man (1980), Cat?s Eye (1988) and The Robber Bride (1993). The plot of her novels frequently focuses on the figure of women, their maturity and changes in sexual roles.

She is also a consummate poet. Her poetry (a genre in which she started writing at the age of nineteen) incorporates mythological, cultural, literary and pictorial references, as in Double Persephone (1961), The Circle Game (1964) and Procedures for Underground (1970). In You are Happy (1974) and Two-Headed Poems (1978), she revealed her interest in social literature: in the former she explores women?s oppression and in the latter, the latent conflict existing in Canada between two cultures and two languages. These concerns were to newly emerge in True Stories (1981), Interlunar (1984) and Morning in the Burned House (1995).

Some of her novels have also been adapted for the cinema and the theatre, such as The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid?s Tale (1985) (also staged as an opera), Alias Grace (1996) and The Blind Assassin (2000). Her latest works include the novel Oryx and Crake (2003), the collection of short stories The Tent (2006), and the book of poetry The Door (2007). Ms. Atwood´s work has been published in more than thirty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.

Winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, the highest award for literature in the English language, she has also received the Canadian Governor General?s Literary Award (1966 and 1986), the Canadian Booksellers Association Award (1977, 1989 and 1996), the Toronto Book Award (1977 and 1989), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1986), the Welsh Arts Council International Writer?s Prize (UK, 1982), the Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK, 1987), the Canadian Authors? Association Novel of the Year (1993), the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence (UK, 1994), the Giller Prize (Canada, 1996), the Premio Mondello (Italy, 1997), the London Literature Award (1999) and the Crime Writers? Association Dashiell Hammett Award (USA, 2001). She has received honorary doctorates from several universities, such as Cambridge, Oxford, Leeds, Toronto and Montreal, is Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Literature, as well as a Companion of the Order of Canada. She has likewise been awarded the Order of Ontario and the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

The Prince of Asturias Foundation?s statutes establish that the aim of the Awards is to acknowledge and extol "scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work carried out by individuals, groups or institutions worldwide". Consonant with this spirit, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters "will be bestowed upon the individual, work group or institution whose creative work or research represents a significant contribution to the fields of Literature or Linguistics".

This year a total of 32 candidatures from Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Guinea, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Spain ran for the award.

This is the sixth of eight Prince of Asturias Awards to be bestowed this year for the twenty-eighth time. The Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts went to the Youth and Children?s Orchestras of Venezuela, founded by José Antonio Abreu, the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation was given to the organisations leading the fight against malaria in Africa: Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre (Tanzania), the Malaria Research and Training Centre (Mali), Kintampo Health Research Centre (Ghana) and Manhiça Health Research Centre (Mozambique), the Scientific and Technical Research Award was jointly granted to five scientists, worldwide leaders in the creation of new materials for the benefit of mankind: the physicist, Sumio Iijima; the engineers, Shuji Nakamura and Robert Langer; and the chemists, George M. Whitesides and Tobin Marks. The Award for Communication and Humanities was given to Google and the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Science went to Tzvetan Todorov, with the Prince of Asturias Awards for Sports and Concord being announced in September.

Each Prince of Asturias Award, which date back to 1981, comprises a diploma, a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the Awards, an insignia bearing the Foundation's coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 Euros. The awards will be presented in the autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias.

Data of interest
Betsy Robbins (Literary agent): betsy@curtisbrown.co.uk
Official Web page www.owtoad.com