Hanif Kureishi wins Pinter literary prize

Kureishi will receive the award, worth £1,000, at a ceremony at the British Library next month

Novelist Hanif Kureishi has been awarded a literary prize set up in honour of playwright Harold Pinter.

The Buddha of Suburbia author won the Pen/Pinter prize as he "courageously... speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world".

Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho will receive the international writer of courage prize, which is awarded to writers persecuted for their beliefs.

Both writers will receive their awards at the British Library on 20 October.

Cacho was arrested, charged with libel and received death threats after publishing a book about a child sex abuse ring involving business figures in Cancun in 2005.

Pinter's widow Lady Antonia Fraser, who helped judge the prize, said: "Hanif Kureishi courageously and irreverently speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world, beyond any platitudes of political correctness.

"Harold Pinter would have been proud that Hanif was chosen for the prize in his name and that of Pen."

The Pen/Pinter prize is given to a British writer who, in the words of Pinter's Nobel Prize winning speech, casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.

Last year, poet and playwright Tony Harrison won the award, worth £1,000.