Canadian author Alice Munro has won the 2013
Nobel Prize for Literature.
Making the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent
secretary of the Swedish Academy, called her a "master
of the contemporary short story".
The 82-year-old, whose books include Dear Life and
Dance of the Happy Shades, is only the 13th woman to
win the prize since its inception in 1901.
"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I
would win," Munro told Canadian media.
Presented by the Nobel Foundation, the award - which
is presented to a living writer - is worth eight million
kronor (£770,000).
Munro said in an interview that Dear Life would
"probably" be her last book
Previous winners include literary giants such as
Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.
Mr Englund told The Associated Press that he had not
been able to contact Munro ahead of the
announcement so left a message on her answering
machine, informing her of her win.
"She has taken an art form, the short story, which has
tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the
novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection,''
he added.
Munro, who began writing in her teenage years,
published her first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow,
in 1950.
She had been studying English at the University of
Western Ontario at the time.
Chekov
Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968, was
Munro's first collection, and it went on to win Canada's
highest literary prize, the Governor General's Award.
In 2009, she won the Man Booker International Prize
for her entire body of work - but she downplayed her
achievements.
"I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I
didn't have any other talents," she once said in an
interview with Book Lounge .
BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz said Munro had been
"at the very top of her game since she started".
"Very few writers are her equal," he said, adding "she
gets to the heart of what it is to be human".
"I thought she might not win because she's not overtly
political; and of late the Nobel has tended to go to
political writers."
The award "probably won't make a commercial
difference" to the author, he added, but it "makes a
huge difference to how her work will be viewed in
historical terms".
"If she hadn't won it before she died, I think it would
have been a terrible, terrible omission."
Often compared to Anton Chekhov, she is known for
writing about the human spirit and a regular theme of
her work is the dilemma faced by young girls growing
up and coming to terms with living in a small town.
The Nobel academy praised her "finely tuned
storytelling, which is characterised by clarity and
psychological realism".
'Pipe dreams'
Munro, whose daughter woke her to tell her she had
won the Nobel, said she was "terribly surprised" and
"delighted".
Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC), she said she always viewed her chances of
winning as "one of those pipe dreams" that "might
happen, but it probably wouldn't".
"It's the middle of the night here and I had forgotten
about it all, of course," she added.
Since the 1960s, Munro has published more than a
dozen collections of short stories, many of which take
place in her native southwest Ontario.
Her writing has brought her several awards. She won
The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the National Book
Critics Circle prize for Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Loveship, Marriage, and is a three-time winner of the
Governor General's prize.
Other notable books include Lives of Girls and Women,
Who Do You Think You Are, The Progress of Love and
Runaway.
In 1980, The Beggar Maid was shortlisted for the annual
Booker Prize for Fiction and her stories frequently
appear in publications such as the New Yorker and the
Paris Review.
Retirement
Several of her stories have also been adapted for the
screen, including The Bear Came Over the Mountain,
which became Away from Her, starring Julie Christie
and Gordon Pinsent.
Munro revealed earlier this year that her latest book,
Dear Life, published in 2012, would be her last.
"Perhaps, when you're my age, you don't wish to be
alone as much as a writer has to be," she told Canada's
National Post .
In 2009, Munro revealed she had been receiving
treatment for cancer. She also had bypass surgery for a
heart condition.
Notriously publicity-shy, Munro shies away from public
events.
According to American literary critic David Homel: "She
is not a socialite. She is actually rarely seen in public,
and does not go on book tours.
Munro will be presented with her latest award at a
formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the
anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who
established the prize.
Last year's recipient was Chinese novelist Mo Yan.
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