Ottawa: Nobel Prize winning Canadian writer Alice MunroShe has become an international master of short stories that artfully depict the love, ambition and hardships of women in her small tow which is a statement from her publisher.
Munro died at home in Port Hope, Ontario, according to McClelland & Stewart CEO Kristin Cochrane.
“She has been the inspiration for many a writer. . . Her writing remains some of the most influential in our country’s history,” said her publicist.
The family told The Globe and Mail that she died on Monday following a dementia diagnosis over ten years ago.
In 2013 Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature after publishing more than a dozen collections of short stories.
Her stories often deal with sexuality, longing, dissatisfaction, aging, moral conflicts and other themes common to villages and farms in Canada’s Ontario region where she grew up. She does this effectively because she can create complex characters within the limited length of short stories.
“Alice Munro is an icon of Canadian literature. Her short stories have captivated Canada and beyond for six decades,” said Minister Pascal St-Onge on X social media site by Canadian Heritage.
Munro writes about ordinary people in a clear realistic style similar to Anton ChekhovThat great Russian author of brilliant short works during Nineteenth century was cited by Nobel when it awarded her its annual prize.
According to The Academy: “A master of the contemporary story…often with one everyday but critical moment as an epiphany illuminating another story around it so existential questions arise almost instantaneously.”
When asked how it felt to win the Nobel Prize in an interview on CBC Radio Canada , Munro said “I think my story is very popular among short stories, and I really hope that thing makes people take notice.” Because it isn’t significant enough.
The titles include: Dance of Happy Shadows (1968), The Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), “Jupiter’s Moons” (1982), “Hate, Friendship, Courtship, Love, Marriage” (2001), “Escape” (2004), “View from Castle Rock” (2006), “Too Much” Happiness (2009) and Dear Life (2012).
The characters in her stories are frequently young girls and adult women who appear to lead ordinary lives but are beset with a variety of difficulties including sexual abuse, oppressive marriages or frustrated love or the ravages of age.
“Last month I reread all of Alice Munro’s books. I wanted to be close to her. Each time it was like reading them for the first time. Every time she changed me completely. She will be remembered forever,” wrote Heather O’Neill on X’s page.
Munro’s “Hate, Friendship, Courtship, Love and Marriage” is an adaptation of the 2006 Oscar nominated movie “Bear Mountain.” The film ‘Away from Her’ directed by Sarah Polley is also based on his short story.
‘Shame and embarrassment’.
Margaret Atwood, a Canadian fiction writer, 2. After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Munro explained it all in an article published by The Guardian: “Munro’s characters are driven to do things because they feel shamed or embarrassed.” 3. Write it down, write what is right and yet Munro records failure more often than success because writing inherently involves failure.
In 2005 Jonathan Franzen wrote that when he read Munro, he was thrown into a reflective mood where he thought about his life including the choices he had made before; those actions that I undertook and those I did not, who I am as a human being Fear of dying.
Short stories were the most popular genre during the 19th and early 20thcenturies but have since lagged behind novels in terms of popular taste and awards. However, many of her short stories contain plots that are just as rich if not richer than some novels.
“I used to think they were only apprenticeships until I got around to doing something else,” Munro said when asked about her early writings by The New Yorker Magazine in 2012.
She became the second person from Canada to win a Nobel Prize for Literature (the first was Saul Bellow), but she is considered Canada’s first truly Canadian winner.
Munro also received Man Booker International Prizes twice in 2009 and Giller Prize which is one of the most prestigious literary awards on Canada.
She was born Alice Laidlaw on July10th1931 into an impoverished farming family in a small town called Wingham located in southwestern Ontario and many of her stories take place there since then she started writing at an early age.
While still raising children at home, Munro began writing short fiction as well as working on another novel in her free time; however, she confided that she had never been able to find the time with three children. Munro’s career essentially began in the 1970s when her stories started being published by The New Yorker.
In 1951, she married James Munro and moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where they operated a bookstore; they had four daughters one of whom died hours after birth before mutually divorcing in 1972; unfortunately, her second husband the geographer Gerald Fremlin died in April 2013.
Munro disclosed that she underwent a heart bypass operation in 2009 and also sought treatment for cancer.
