* Culture * Books * Toni Morrison Profile: Toni Morrison When she speaks, America listens

Toni Morrison has become a figurehead for repressed minorities and underdogs. All the same, it must have been odd for her, in light of the recent Nobel commotion, to find herself recast in the usual role by virtue of neither her race nor her gender, but her nationality. Now, in addition to being the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, she stands as the last American in 15 years to do so, perhaps the last ever, if the Nobel Prize committee's Horace Engdahl were to have his way.

Toni Morrison attracts an intensity of adulation more commonly reserved for children's authors. Her fans flock to her readings in their thousands. They have included real red carpet celebrities as well as literary celebrities - Marlon Brando and Hillary Clinton along with Margaret Atwood and AS Byatt.

They have made every novel since her third, published three decades ago, into a bestseller and ensured that first edition copies of her debut fetch in excess of $10,000. Message boards are abuzz with the advance word on her forthcoming novel, A Mercy, her first in five years. She is, according to the New York Times, 'the nearest thing America has to a national novelist'.