AlQa'dah 8, 1432, Oct 6, 2011, SPA -- After a long wait, Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer was Thursday named winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, dpa reported. The Swedish Academy cited Transtromer, who had been nominated several times previously, "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." Transtromer, 80, whose speech was severely impaired when he had a stroke in 1990, seemed calm when he appeared at an impromptu press conference, held in the entrance lobby of his five-storey apartment building in Sodermalm, Stockholm. Asked how he felt about winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, he smiled and said simply, "Very good." Wearing a grey cardigan and striped shirt, a big smile on his face, and leaning on a cane, he stepped out of the elevator supported by his wife Monica Transtromer, who did most of the talking. His wife said they were very surprised. "He had been eager to watch the broadcast from the academy on TV," she said. But they didn't get to see much because Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, phoned them at 12:55 pm - five minutes before the announcement.
