Tributes poured in for Doris Lessing, the British author awarded a Nobel Prize in literature for a lifetime of writing about gender and race, drawing on her own upbringing in Africa, who died on Sunday at the age of 94.

The Swedish author Per Wästberg pronounced her "one of the world's greatest contemporary writers".

"At an advanced age, she wrote some very beautiful works," Wästberg told the Swedish news agency TT.

"I think her books will pass into posterity."

On winning the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy described Lessing as an "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

When informed about winning the prize outside her London home she responded: "Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less."