LONDON, Nov 17 — Acclaimed British author AS Byatt, who won the 1990 Booker Prize for her best-selling romance novel Possession, has died at the age of 87, her publisher announced today.
Byatt, also a poet, short-story writer and critic, died “peacefully at home surrounded by close family”, Penguin Random House said.
The publisher hailed her as “one of the most significant writers and critics of our time”.
The novelist — who was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009 for The Children’s Book — was made a dame in 1999.
Other accolades during her career, which produced 24 novels and works of criticism, included winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.
Clara Farmer, her publisher at Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Penguin Random House, said her books were “the most wonderful jewel boxes of stories and ideas”.
“Her compulsion to write (A4 blue notebook always to hand) and her ability to create intricate skeins of narrative was remarkable,” she added.
“We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come.”
Educated at Cambridge University, Byatt taught at the Central School of Art and Design, and was a lecturer in English at University College, London, between 1972 and 1984, before returning to full time writing.
Her books have been translated into dozens of languages.
She was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 2016, for her “inspiring contribution to life writing”, and the Pak Kyongni Prize in 2017.
In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award. — AFP
