Shorts: World

Jewish playwright wins Nobel

london (jta) | British Jewish playwright Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature last week.

Pinter, 75, has attributed some of the alienation and isolation that permeates his work to the anti-Semitism he experienced as a child in London's East End.

His works include "Betrayal," "The Homecoming" and "The Birthday Party." His spare style — echoed in the works of David Mamet and a host of other playwrights — has spawned the adjective "Pinteresque."

Announcing Pinter's prize Oct. 13, the Swedish Academy said his writing "forces entry into oppression's closed rooms." In recent years, Pinter has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war and a supporter of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli jailed for 18 years for revealing his country's nuclear secrets.