Lucas Ballesteros Sabater
VOIX Culture Editor
Alice Munro was born in a rural area in Ontario (Canada) during the depression and soon she moved to Vancouver and later to Victoria where she got married and had three children. Due to the fact that she had to look after her three daughters, Munro had little time to write novels and thus the short story seemed to be the most suitable choice. The members of the jury addressed Munro as ‘the master of the short story’. The short story has been sometimes regarded as a previous step before the novel. Nevertheless, after having won the Nobel Prize Munro declared: ‘I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel’.
Munro’s greatness is tangible in all her literary works. Most of her short stories share a common settlement in rural Canada—usually small towns and villages—where the reader can breathe the wilderness and folklore of such landscapes.
In 1971 Munro published a successful novel Lives of Girls and Women. From that moment on Alice Munro became a fruitful short story writer—one of the best, in fact —with Who Do You Think You are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Runaway (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006), Too Much Happiness (2009) and her latest work, Dear Life (2012).
Despite having won the Nobel Prize, Alice Munro claims that she is no longer going to write again. Three years ago she confessed in a public event that she suffered from cancer. After all Munro has given the short story the well-deserved prestige. Her dedication is irreproachable and thus her legacy must be taken as gift which this fabulous author has bequeathed us.
At the very end of her literary career, Canadian writer Alice Munro has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many likely names were on the list—Murakami, Roth, Oates—but Munro did not ever imagine she would be the awarded one. One day, early in the morning, Munro’s daughter called her and told her about the good news. She herself claimed that she knew she was in the running but she never thought she would win.
In Sweden, Munro received the award which, besides the classical trophy, consists of an eight million Swedish crown (£773,200) reward.
ALICE MUNRO
Literature Nobel Prize Winner
“Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight”
Zambezi on three sides
Foaming at a finger of rock
Sitting like an old baboon
The same spray that feeds a
Year-long rainforest column
Dug into the dry grass
(I don’t think it’s
for
angels and missionaries)
Cools my sunburnt shoulders
By Joey Frances
LivingstoneLivingstoneLivingstoneLivingstoneLivingstoneLivi
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