Alice Munro, Nobel Prize winner in literature, dies at 92

The writer Alice Munro, Nobel Prize winner in literature in 2013 and considered “Canada’s Chekhov” for her mastery of the short story, died at the age of 92, her editor announced this Tuesday, May 14, 2024.

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Editor Deborah Treisman and her long-time friend David Staines confirmed to AFP that Munro died on Monday. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, which cited the family, indicated that the writer had died in a nursing home in Ontario.

“She was the greatest short story author of our time. She was an exceptional writer and human being.“Stines stated.

Suffering from dementia for more than a decade, she had won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her entire work.

Culture Minister Pascale St-Onge described her as an “icon of Canadian literature.”

“For six decades, his short stories captivated readers in Canada and around the world.“wrote the minister in X.

Munro set his tense, sharply observed stories in the rural Ontario where he grew up, focusing on the frailties of the human condition.

Despite her great success and an impressive list of literary awards, she long remained as simple and modest as the characters in her fiction.

“She is not a worldly writer, she is rarely seen in public“He doesn’t attend book launches,” commented the American literary critic David Homel after Munro achieved worldwide fame.

This low public profile contrasts with that of another Canadian giant of contemporary literature, Margaret Atwood.

Born July 10, 1931 in Wingham, Ontario, Alice Munro grew up in the countryside. His father, Robert Eric Laidlaw, raised foxes and poultry, while his mother was a teacher in a small town.

At only 11 years old, she decided that she wanted to be a writer and never wavered in her professional choice. “I think maybe I was successful doing this because I didn’t have any other talent.“he once explained in an interview.

Alice Munro’s first story, “The Dimensions of a Shadow,” was published in 1950, while she was a student at the University of Western Ontario.

He received the Governor General’s Award for his first short story collection, “Shadow Dance,” published in 1968.

“Our Chekhov”

Alice Munro won numerous other awards in Canada and abroad, while her short stories – often based on the simple life of Huron County, Ontario – appeared in prestigious magazines such as The New Yorker.

His themes and style, marked by the presence of a narrator who explains the meaning of events, earned him the title of “our Chekhov” by the American writer of Russian origin Cynthia Ozick.

One of his stories, “Far from Her”, was adapted to film in 2006 and received two Oscar nominations..

In 2009, she was awarded the prestigious Man Booker International Prize before revealing that she had defeated cancer, a disease that had affected one of her heroines in a story published in The New Yorker in February 2008.

“Alice Munro is best known as a writer of short stories, but she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to each story as most novelists do to their entire work,” the jury declared at the time. “Reading Alice Munro is always learning something you haven’t thought about before.”

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