Alice becomes 13th woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature

The 82-year-old had been among the favourites to win the prize, along with Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami – who was the bookmakers’ favourite – and a Belorussian journalist and author Svetlana Alexieva.Others earlier listed as contenders by bookmakers include: American author Philip Roth, Syrian poet Adonis, American novelist Thomas Pynchon, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, Spanish […]

The 82-year-old had been among the favourites to win the prize, along with Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami – who was the bookmakers’ favourite – and a Belorussian journalist and author Svetlana Alexieva.
Others earlier listed as contenders by bookmakers include: American author Philip Roth, Syrian poet Adonis, American novelist Thomas Pynchon, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, Spanish novelist Javier Marias, Israeli author of fiction and journalism David Grossman, American Bob Dylan and Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
In her 14 volumes of short stories, including ‘The View From Castle Rock’ (2006)’ and ‘The Progress of Love’ (1986), the warp and weft of rural and small-town life in south-western Ontario has always been her subject, having only once swerved off course into the novel.
She once said of her work: “What I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together – radiant, everlasting.”
Earlier this year she announced her retirement from writing – which prompted the following tribute from novelist Jane Smiley: “Thank you, Alice Munro, for one glittering jewel of a story after another. Thank you for the many days and nights I spent lost in your work. Thank you for your unembarrassed woman’s perspective on the lives of girls and women, but also the lives of boys and men. Thank you for your cruelty as well as your kindness, because the one plus the other is the essence of truthfulness.”
Munro is the 110th winner of the prize and the 13th woman to receive it. No one has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once.
Over 100 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since 1901. It was not awarded in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943.
Why were the Literature Prizes not awarded in those years? In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.”