“This is so surprising and wonderful,” said Munro in a statement supplied by her publisher. “I am dazed by all the attention and affection that has been coming my way this morning. It is such an honour to receive this wonderful recognition from the Nobel Committee and I send them my thanks.
“When I began writing there was a very small community of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world. Now Canadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe. I’m so thrilled to be chosen as this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature recipient. I hope it fosters further interest in all Canadian writers. I also hope that this brings further recognition to the short story form.”
Munro, whom the Royal Swedish Academy called a “master of the contemporary short story,” is only the 13th woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1901, and the first since German writer Herta Müller in 2009. Recent winners include the Chinese novelist Mo Yan; the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer; and the Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa. The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor (approximately $1.3-million CDN).
“I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win,” Munro said by telephone when contacted by The Canadian Press in Victoria. She added that she was delighted and “just terribly surprised.”
She had been considered a perennial contender for the Nobel prize in literature, with British-based betting company Ladbrokes positioning her as the second-most likely recipient this year behind Japanese master Haruki Murakami.
“We’ve been teased with this prospect for years now, and for it finally to happen, and for Alice not to be kept up all night waiting for no news, is such a wonderful thing,” said Deborah Treisman, her editor at the New Yorker for the past 12 years. “It brings this incredible validation, both of her and her career, and of her form – the dedication to the short story.”
Technically, she’s not the first Canadian to win the prize. That would be Saul Bellow, who was born in Lachine, Quebec, but moved to Chicago as a child. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976, but is largely considered an American writer.
This feels different, however, a monumental day for Canadian writing. In the minutes after the announcement, Twitter and Facebook exploded with well-wishes from other Canadian authors, including Margaret Atwood, another long-rumoured contender for the prize.
“This is no different than Canadians winning at hockey at the Olympics,” said Geoffrey Taylor, artistic director of the International Festival of Authors. “This is a win for us all. Canadians, by our very nature, are not very nationalistic. But things like this suddenly make you want to find a flag.”
In a statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the prize “is the culmination of a lifetime of brilliant writing.
“Ms. Munro is a giant in Canadian literature and this Nobel Prize further solidifies Canada’s place among the ranks of countries with the best writers in the world,” said Harper. “I am certain that Ms. Munro’s tremendous body of work and this premier accomplishment will serve to inspire Canadian writers of all ranks to pursue literary excellence and their passion for the written word.”
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said that she is “part of a lucky population who has been forever changed by [Munro's] unparalleled ability to articulate the complexity and heartbreaks of everyday life.
“Ms. Munro has, over the course of her long career, established herself as one of the world’s greatest living authors and a tremendous source of pride and inspiration for this province,” she said in a statement. “Her stories captured the unique character and experience of small-town Ontario and her selection as a Nobel Laureate is a tribute to her profound talent and devastating insight. I am thrilled for her and all the lucky readers around the globe who will discover her as a result of this honour.”
Her longtime publisher and editor Douglas Gibson, who has worked with Munro since 1976 – at a point where she found herself pressured to write a novel, he convinced her to continue writing short stories – admitted he could not sleep the night before the announcement.
“I was like a kid on Christmas Eve,” he said. “And then Santa came.”
Over the course of a career that’s stretched over 45 years — Munro didn’t publish her first collection until she was 37 years old — her books have remained consistently excellent. She has gone about her work, quietly and without fuss, penning stories mostly set in the back roads and small towns of southwestern Ontario, where she was born and now lives. Although her stories all touch upon similar themes, and introduce readers to familiar characters, each one holds its own surprises. In an industry that has faced the bankruptcy and merger of publishing houses, the collapse of bookstores and the rise of ebooks, Munro has remained a constant.
“It’s the crowning achievement,” said Brad Martin, the President and CEO of Penguin Random House Canada. “As a Canadian, we should all be proud of her. I think she’s the best short story writer in the world. This just confirms it.”
Her first book, Dance of the Happy Shades, won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1968; she won the same prize in 1978 for Who Do You Think You Are? (published elsewhere as The Beggar Maid) and in 1986 for The Progress of Love. She’s twice won the Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award: The Love of A Good Woman won in 1998, while Runaway took home the prize in 2004. Most recently Munro, whose work has been compared to that of Anton Chekhov, was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. At the time, the judges said: “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.”
“This is really confirmation of what those of us deeply involved in Munro have always thought was only appropriate and just for someone who is produced a body of work that is of such consistent high quality, and which continued to grow from book to book to book,” said her biographer, Robert Thacker, author of 2005′s Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, on the phone from California. “This is a writer who is enormously respected because of her lifelong commitment to her craft.”
Although Munro is a perennial bestseller in Canada, booksellers across the country were optimistic the prize would introduce a new crop of readers to her work. At Munro’s Books in Victoria, the store that Munro co-founded with her first husband, Jim, in 1963, store manager Jessica Walker said upon hearing the news on the radio Thursday morning she immediately ordered more books from Munro’s publisher, and, upon arriving at the store, moved every copy they had in stock to the front of the store. “She’s won so many accolades, and she’s held in such high regard by other writers, that this is kind of like the cap on [her] career,” said Walker. At Ben McNally’s Books in Toronto, proprietor Ben McNally said that although Munro “has been a beacon for Canadian writers and the Canadian literary community for a long, long time,” because she’s already well-known in Canada the impact of the Nobel Prize “will be much more evident outside of Canada.” Bahram Olfati, the senior-vice president of print at Indigo Books & Music, Canada’s largest chain of bookstores, said “this will introduce her to a whole new generation. She is a Canadian icon.”
Her future as an author remains uncertain. In June, after winning the Trillium Book Award for her 14th collection, Dear Life, she told the National Post “I’m probably not going to write anymore. And, so, it’s nice to go out with a bang.” (In an interview with nobelprize.org on Thursday, Munro said “But this may change my mind.”)
Jack Rabinovitch, the founder of the Giller Prize, said Munro’s win would be celebrated at the award’s 20th anniversary gala ceremony next month. “It’s about time,” said Rabinovitch. “What it does is recognize the fact this country has a tremendous plethora of good writers. I think [Munro] is going to be the first of many. [Margaret] Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry. These are all outstanding writers.”
As well, the International Festival of Authors in Toronto will hold a tribute to Munro on Saturday, November 2, an event that has been in the works for months, although at this time it is still unknown whether Munro will attend.
“This is something that a lot of people have been wanting to happen for a very long time,” said Taylor of Munro’s Nobel Prize. “Those of us who have known her work have got to be giddy to know that so many more people are going to have access to it.
“This is just going to go nuts.”
Speaking on the phone from New York, Treisman laughed when recalling an on-stage interview she conducted with Munro a couple of years ago in New York, during which time an audience member asked about how she felt when her stories were rejected.
“She talked about the fact it still hurt if the New Yorker turned down one of her stories,” said Treisman. “She still found this deeply wounding. And I thought it was just so perfect, and humbling, because we so often think of her as this great figure. But to think of her just as this vulnerable being, typing alone in rural Ontario, and hoping that someone’s going to read her, still, and the fact she’s still grateful when that happens, I found really touching.”
Here is a list of short story collections by Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday:With files from The Canadian Press.
“Dance of the Happy Shades,” 1968
“Lives of Girls and Women,” 1971
“Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You,” 1974
“Who Do You Think You Are?” 1978 (“The Beggar Maid” in U.S. editions)
“The Moons of Jupiter,” 1982
“The Progress of Love,” 1986
“Friend of My Youth,” 1990
“Open Secrets,” 1994
“The Love of a Good Woman,” 1998
“Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” 2001
“Runaway,” 2004
“The View From Castle Rock,” 2006
“Too Much Happiness,” 2009
“Dear Life,” 2012
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