Alice Munro, called by the Nobel committee “Master of the contemporary short story,” has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature. Munro, 82, is the first Canadian to take the prize. She told a National Post reporter earlier this year that she’s retiring from writing.
Those looking for an in depth introduction to Munro’s work should read Ben Dolnick’s “A Beginner’s Guide to Alice Munro,” which he introduces thus:
Considering which of Alice Munro’s stories to read can feel something like considering what to eat from an enormous box of chocolates. There are an overwhelming number of choices, many of which have disconcertingly similar appearances — and, while you’re very likely to choose something delicious, there is the slight but real possibility of finding yourself stuck with, say, raspberry ganache.
Munro is perhaps best represented by the various short story compilations collecting her best works:
Selected Stories (1996)
Vintage Munro (2004)
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (2006)
Munro has published a number of books over her long career:
Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)
Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974)
The Beggar Maid (1978) (As close as Munro has ever come to writing a novel)
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) (#9 on our Best Books of the Millennium List)
Runaway (2004)
The View from Castle Rock (2006)
Too Much Happiness (2009)
Dear Life (2012) (Our review)
