Alice Munro, Nobel-winning Canadian queen of short stories, dead at 92
- Unassuming and modest despite her vast success and mastery of the form, the Booker-winning writer as ‘Canada’s Chekhov’ suffered from dementia in recent years
- Munro’s taut, acutely observed stories were set in the Ontario countryside where she grew up, focusing a stark lens on the frailties of the human condition
Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author known as “Canada’s Chekhov” for her mastery of the short story, has died at 92, Canadian media reported on Tuesday.
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 and the International Booker Prize for her body of work in 2009, Munro had suffered from dementia in recent years. According to the Globe and Mail, she died late on Monday at her care home in Ontario.
Munro set her taut, acutely observed stories in the rural Ontario countryside where she grew up, focusing a stark lens on the frailties of the human condition.
Despite her vast success and an impressive list of literary prizes, however, she long remained as unassuming and modest as the characters in her fiction.
“She is not a socialite. She is actually rarely seen in public, and does not go on book tours,” commented American literary critic David Homel after she rose to global fame.
That shy public profile contrasted with another Canadian contemporary literary giant, Margaret Atwood.