JM Coetzee has won the Booker prize twice

South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee has been awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Nobel Academy's head, Horace Engdahl, said Coetzee "in innumerable guises portrays the surprise involvement of the outsider".

The 18 lifetime members of the 217-year-old Swedish Academy made the annual selection in deep secrecy at one of their weekly meetings.

He is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilisation Nobel Academy on Coeztee

The prize includes a cheque for more than 10 million kronor ($1.3m), but it can also bestow increased sales, celebrity and admiration.

Syrian poet Ali Ahman Said, better known as Adonis, had been the favourite for the prize.

Some literary experts said the academy might lean towards him in an attempt to alleviate bitterness at the US invasion of Iraq.

'Ruthless'

Coetzee becomes the fourth African writer since 1980 to win the prestigious award.

In its citation, the academy said his novels were characterised by their well-craft composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance.

"But at the same time, he is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilisation," it said.

Coetzee was born in February 1940 and until recently was a professor of general literature at the University of Cape Town.

He was the first writer to win the Booker prize twice, carrying off the prize in 1983 with The Life & Times of Michael K and scooping it again in 1999 with Disgrace.

'Outstanding work'

A week of Nobel Prizes starts on Monday with the medicine award, followed Tuesday by physics and Wednesday by chemistry and economics.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be named on 10 October in Oslo, Norway, the only Nobel not awarded in Sweden.

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite.

He gave only vague guidance about the literature prize, saying that it should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".

The prizes always are presented on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.