STOCKHOLM, Sweden - British playwright Harold Pinter, whose juxtaposition of the brutal and the banal dubbed an adjective that bears his name, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature today.

The Swedish Academy said Pinter was an author "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."

In its citation, the academy said the 75-year-old playwright was one who restored the art form of writing plays. His works include "The Room," "The Birthday Party" and "The Dumb Waiter" and his breakthrough work, "The Caretaker."

"Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the academy said.

Pinter is the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul won it in 2001.

The son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was born in London on Oct. 10, 1930. Pinter has said his encounters with anti-Semitism in his youth influenced him in becoming a dramatist. The wartime bombing of London also affected him deeply, the academy said.

The academy's announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism's most important holiday.

Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield.

Dark and peopled with unfortunates, Pinter's idiom was so distinctive that he got his own adjective: "Pinteresque."

In addition to plays, he has written for the cinema, penning such screenplays as "The French Lieutenant's Woman," "The Accident," "The Servant" and "The Go-Between."