Who was the oldest Nobel Prize in Literature laureate when awarded?

Doris Lessing was the oldest Nobel Prize in Literature laureate when she received the award at age 88 in 2007.

The British novelist was honored as a writer who examined divided civilization with skepticism, fire, and visionary power. Her fiction frequently addressed politics, gender, psychology, colonialism, and social change.

Lessing was born in Persia, now Iran, in 1919 and grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Her major works include The Golden Notebook, The Grass Is Singing, and the five-volume Canopus in Argos series. Her career crossed literary realism, political fiction, and speculative writing.

Lessing did not attend the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm because of ill health. She died in 2013. Her age record is distinct from the age of other late-career winners, including Bertrand Russell, who won in 1950 at age 78.