Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer has won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday.

"The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 is awarded to Tomas Transtromer for 'because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality,'" said Englund.

One of Sweden's most important poets, Transtromer was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1931. He attended the University of Stockholm, where he studied psychology and poetry. He now lives with his wife Monica in Vasteras, west of Stockholm.

His works have sold thousands of volumes in his native country, and have been translated into more than fifty languages.

Transtromer's books of poetry include The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (New Directions, 2003), The Half-Finished Heaven (2001); New Collected Poems (1997); For the Living and the Dead (1995); Baltics (1974); Paths (1973) and Windows and Stones (1972), according to his biography.

His style has gradually shifted from the traditional and ambitious nature poetry written in his early twenties toward darker, personal, and more open verse.

The wheel-chaired poet has been mentioned to be nominated as a Nobel winner for many years.

Transtromer's honors and awards include the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

He is also a respected psychologist, has worked at a juvenile prison, with the disabled, convicts and drug addicts.

Transtromer will win the 10 million Swedish kronor (1.46 million U.S. dollars) prize.

Last year's literature prize went to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later.