Canadian writer and Nobel prize winner Alice Munro dies at 92
Canadian author Alice Munro, recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, has passed away at the age of 92. Munro, renowned for her poignant portrayal of rural Canadian life, crafted short stories for over six decades.
She breathed her last at her residence in Port Hope, Ontario, on Monday night, as confirmed by her family and publisher. Often likened to Russian literary giant Anton Chekhov for the depth and empathy in her narratives, Munro was hailed as a national treasure by Kristin Cochrane, CEO of Penguin Random House Canada.
Munro’s literary journey took flight in 1968 with the publication of “Dance of The Happy Shades,” a collection delving into suburban life in western Ontario, which clinched Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award. This marked the onset of a remarkable career, crowned with three Governor General’s Awards and a Nobel Prize.
Throughout her prolific career, Munro penned thirteen collections of short stories, along with the novel “Lives of Girls and Women,” and two volumes of selected stories.
Notably, her narrative “Royal Beatings,” published in The New Yorker in 1977, resonated deeply, drawing from her own experiences of familial discipline during her formative years.
Born in 1931 in Wingham, Ontario, to a fox farmer and a schoolteacher, Munro’s upbringing infused her tales with the essence of her surroundings, capturing the essence of the region’s people, culture, and ethos.
Despite her humble beginnings, Munro’s academic prowess earned her the title of class valedictorian in high school and a scholarship to the University of Western Ontario, where her proficiency in English stood unmatched.
Balancing her academic pursuits with a fervent dedication to her craft, Munro’s legacy endures as a testament to her unparalleled literary mastery and unwavering commitment to storytelling.
She has published more than a dozen collections of short stories. In the 1950s and 1960s, her stories were broadcast on the CBC and published in several Canadian periodicals.
Some of her stories compared life before and after the social revolution of the 1960s.
“Having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old, and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing around,” she said.
One well-known story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, was made into the 2006 film Away from Her, starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.
In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker Prize International Prize for lifetime achievement.
The judges said in a statement at the time: “To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”
They added that Munro “brings as much depth, wisdom, and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels”.
She later won the Nobel Prize in 2013. Previous winners include literary giants such as Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison, and Ernest Hemingway.
The Nobel committee called Munro a “master of the contemporary short story”.
Munro said in an interview with the Guardian in 2013 that she had been “writing personal stories all my life”.
“Maybe I write stories that people get very involved in, maybe it is the complexity and the lives presented in them,” she told the Guardian in 2013. “I hope they are a good read. I hope they move people.”
Her last collection of stories, Dear Life, was published in 2012. It included a collection of partly autobiographical stories.
She told the National Post newspaper that Dear Life was special because she’d likely not write anymore.
“Not that I didn’t love writing, but I think you do get to a stage where you sort of think about your life differently,” she said.
