Pinter wins Nobel prize

British playwright Harold Pinter, a master of sparse dialogue and menacing silences who has been an outspoken critic of the US-led war in Iraq, was the winner of the Nobel literature prize on Thursday.

The 75-year-old is one of Britain's best-known dramatists for plays like The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, whose mundane dialogue with sinister undercurrents gave rise to the adjective Pinteresque.