France honours US novelist

Paris - France's culture minister has inducted Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison into the Legion of Honour.

In a ceremony on Wednesday in a gilded hall in the Paris ministry, Frederic Mitterrand pinned a red and gold medal onto the celebrated US author's jacket as a scrum of photographers snapped away.

Mitterrand calls Morrison, whose 1987 novel Beloved won her international acclaim, "the greatest American novelist of her time".

Morrison says the award showed that "in addition to being welcomed" in France, she's "prized".

She was made an officer in the Legion of Honour. Created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the legion recognises military, cultural, scientific or social contributions to France.