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Reports: Nobel winner Harold Pinter dies

Other News Materials 25 December 2008 19:04 (UTC +04:00)

The Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter has died, his second wife confirmed Thursday to British media.

Pinter, 78, who had been suffering from cancer, died on Christmas Eve, according to the reports.

Lady Antonia Fraser, told the Guardian newspaper: "He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten."

Pinter -- born in London in 1930 and the son of Jewish immigrants -- became one of the world's best known playwrights, CNN reported.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

His plays, including "The Birthday Party" (1957), "The Homecoming" (1964), "No Man's Land" (1974), "Mountain Language" (1988), and "Celebration" (2000), caught a linguistic rhythm -- the legendary "Pinter pause" -- and an air of social unease that resonated throughout the English-speaking world and in myriad translations.

His movie credits, like his plays, span the decades and include "The Quiller Memorandum" (1965) and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981).

He was married first to the actress Vivien Merchant. Following a 1980 divorce, Pinter married writer-historian Lady Antonia Fraser.

Across both relationships, Pinter captured what the Swedish Academy described when awarding him the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature as a "comedy of menace" with "domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations."

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