For a writer, there is hardly any greater honor than winning the Nobel Prize for literature. And for a woman writer, claiming the prize is even harder, for only eight women once won it. Austria's Elfriede Jelinek is the ninth and the first since 1996. The Stockholm-based Swedish Academy announced last Thursday that Jelinek won this year's Nobel Prize in literature. She is recognized for her socially critical  novels and plays. Jelinek, 57, made her literary debut   in 1967. She has written plays, novels and poetry. She is best known for her autobiographical 1983 novel "The Piano Teacher", made into a movie in 2001. The basic theme of her work is the inability of women to live as people beyond the roles and personalities traditionally expected of _ . Her characters struggle to lead lives not normally acceptable in society. "The nature of Jelinek's texts is often hard to define. They shift between prose  and poetry and songs, they contain theatrical scenes and film script," said the academy. The Nobel Prize was founded by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Nobel died in 1896 and left his fortune of about US $920 million to a fund to honor people who have helped other human beings. This year each prize is worth US $13 million. Elfrede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize just because   _  .
she was an Austrian woman writer she wrote socially critical novels and plays her novel "The Piano Teacher" was made into a movie the nature of her texts is hard to define.