Canadian short story writer Alice Munro is the new winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work.
Munro is one of Canada’s most famous writers, well known for her short stories.
The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize made the following comment on the winner:
“Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before”.
Alice Munro's first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), was highly acclaimed and won that year’s Governor General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary prize. This success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories that was published as a novel.
Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the all-knowing narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers of the U.S. rural south. As in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions.
A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly.
Other recent works are: No Love Lost (2003), Vintage Munro (2004), and The View from Castle Rock (2006). Her latest collection of short stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in October 2009.
Munro is one of Canada’s most famous writers, well known for her short stories.
The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize made the following comment on the winner:
“Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before”.
Alice Munro's first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), was highly acclaimed and won that year’s Governor General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary prize. This success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories that was published as a novel.
Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the all-knowing narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers of the U.S. rural south. As in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions.
A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly.
Other recent works are: No Love Lost (2003), Vintage Munro (2004), and The View from Castle Rock (2006). Her latest collection of short stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in October 2009.
