Thursday 10 October 2013

Canadian writer, Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2013


The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 has been awarded to Canadian author, Alice Munro, 82.  


Munro is the 13th women to have received the Nobel prize in Literature. Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund made the announcement on October 10, 2013, in Stockholm, Sweden. Munro won the 106th Nobel Prize in Literature as what the Swedish Academy described as "master of the contemporary short story".
 
Alice Munro

List of women awardees of Nobel Prize in Literature:
1909 - Selma Lagerlöf
1926 - Grazia Deledda
1928 - Sigrid Undset
1938 - Pearl Buck
1945 - Gabriela Mistral
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1991 - Nadine Gordimer
1993 - Toni Morrison
1996 - Wislawa Szymborska
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek
2007 - Doris Lessing
2009 - Herta Müller
2013 - Alice Munro.


Across Literature and science, 44 women has won the Nobel Prizes. 


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.
Munro's 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

Last year, Chinese author Mo Yan won the prize.


The prize was not  awarded on seven occasions: in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943. Reason: In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: "If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation's restricted funds." During World War I and II, fewer Nobel Prizes were awarded.

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