Canadian author Alice Munro has won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Swedish Academy said the 82-year-old had claimed the $1.25 million prize for being the "master of the contemporary short story". The author, whose short story collections include Who Do You Think You Are? and The Moons of Jupiter, has earned comparisons to Russian author Anton Chekhov for her impressive short fiction. The Canadian writer won the Man Booker International prize in 2009, with the judges appraising her work as "practically perfect". Munro was second favorite for the prize behind Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
Alice Munro was born on the 10th of July, 1931 in Wingham, which is in the Canadian province of Ontario. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a fox farmer. After finishing high school, she began studying journalism and English at the University of Western Ontario, but broke off her studies when she got married in 1951. Together with her husband, she settled in Victoria, British Columbia, where the couple opened a bookstore. Munro started writing stories in her teens, but published her first book-length work in 1968, the story collection Dance of the Happy Shades, which received considerable attention in Canada. She had begun publishing in various magazines from the beginning of the 1950's. In 1971 she published a collection of stories entitled Lives of Girls and Women, which critics have described as a Bildungsroman.
Munro is primarily known for her short stories and has published many collections over the years. Her works include Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Runaway (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006) and Too Much Happiness (2009). The collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) became the basis of the film Away from Her from 2006, directed by Sarah Polley. Her most recent collection is Dear Life (2012).
Munro is acclaimed for her finely tuned storytelling, which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism. Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov. Her stories are often set in small town environments, where the struggle for a socially acceptable existence often results in strained relationships and moral conflicts – problems that stem from generational differences and colliding life ambitions. Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning.
Alice Munro currently resides in Clinton, near her childhood home in southwestern Ontario.
Works in Spanish
Las lunas de Júpiter / traducción de Esperanza Pérez Moreno. – Barcelona : Versal, 1990. – Título original: The Moons of Jupiter
El progreso del amor / versión castellana de Flora Casas. – Madrid : Debate, 1990. – Título original: The Progress of Love
Amistad de juventud / traducción de Esperanza Pérez Moreno. – Barcelona : Versal, 1991. – Título original: Friend of My Youth
Secretos a voces / versión castellana de Flora Casas. – Madrid : Debate, 1996. – Título original: Open Secrets
El amor de una mujer generosa : relatos / traducción de Javier Alfaya Bula, José Hamad, Javier Alfaya McShane. – Madrid : Siglo XXI de España, 2002. – Título original: The Love of a Good Woman
Odio, amistad, noviazgo, amor, matrimonio / traducción de Marcelo Cohen. – Barcelona : RBA, 2003. – Título original: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Escapada / traducción de Carmen Aguilar. – Barcelona : RBA, 2005. – Título original: Runaway
La vista desde Castle Rock / traducción de Isabel Ferrer y Carlos Milla. – Barcelona : RBA, 2008. – Título original: The View from Castle Rock
Demasiada felicidad / traducción de Flora Casas. – Barcelona : Lumen, 2010. – Título original: Too Much Happiness
La vida de las mujeres / traducción de Aurora Echevarría. – Barcelona : Lumen, 2011. – Título original: Lives of Girls and Women
Mi vida querida / traducción de Eugenia Vázquez Nacarino. – Barcelona : Lumen, 2013. – Título original: Dear Life
Major works in English
Dance of the Happy Shades and Other Stories. – Toronto : Ryerson, 1968
Lives of Girls and Women. – Toronto : McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1971
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You : Thirteen Stories. – Toronto : McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974
Who Do You Think You Are? : Stories. – Toronto : Macmillan of Canada, 1978. – Note: also published as The Beggar Maid : Stories of Flo and Rose. – New York : Knopf, 1979
The Moons of Jupiter : Stories. – Toronto : Macmillan of Canada, 1982
The Progress of Love. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1986
Friend of My Youth : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1990
Open Secrets : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1994
The Love of a Good Woman : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1998
Queenie : A Story. – London : Profile Books/London Review of Books, 1999
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2001
Runaway : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2004
The View from Castle Rock : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2006
Away from Her. – New York : Vintage, 2007. – Note: contains the short story “The Bear Came Over The Mountain” which was later made into the motion picture Away from her
Too Much Happiness : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2009
Dear Life : Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2012
Collected short stories
Selected Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1996
No Love Lost. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2003
Vintage Munro. – New York : Vintage, 2004
Carried Away : A Selection of Stories. – New York : Knopf, 2006
Alice Munro’s Best : Selected Stories. – Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2008
New Selected Stories. – London : Chatto & Windus, 2011
