Nobel winner Toni Morrison dies at the age of 88

CAIRO - 6 August 2019: African-American Nobel winning novelist Toni Morrison has died at the age of 88.

Alfred Nobel Printing House declared that Morrison died on Monday (Aug. 5) evening at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

Morrison was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

She was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the category of fictional works for her novel "The Beloved" in 1988.

The novel was later adapted into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover in 1998.

Moreover, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture; the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in humanities.

The prominent writer was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Furthermore, Morrison wrote the libretto for a new opera, "Margaret Garner", first performed in 2005.

On May 29, 2012, former US President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 2016, Morrison received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

She died from unknown causes on August 5, 2019