Toni Morrison wins PEN/Saul Bellow award for contribution to American fiction

Nobel prize-winning author placed ‘in highest rank of American literature’ by £25,000 accolade previously awarded to Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy and Philip Roth

American icon Toni Morrison has been awarded the 2016 PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction.

The award, which is presented to living American authors whose “scale of achievement in fiction, over a sustained career, places him or her in the highest rank of American literature”, is worth $25,000 (£18,000).

Morrison is famous for her epic, often historical writings about race, family and identity. She wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970 when she was 39, while working as a senior editor at Random House. TheGuardian.com