Alice Munro wins Man Booker International Prize
Third winner of international prize announced
ALICE MUNRO WINS 2009 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/
Alice Munro is today, 27 May, announced as the winner of the third Man Booker International Prize.
The Man Booker International Prize is worth £60,000 to the winner and is awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005 and then to Chinua Achebe in 2007.
Munro is best known for her short stories and is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers.
Alice Munro comments: “I am totally amazed and delighted.”
Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario on 10 July 1931. In 1963 she moved to Victoria and established Munro Books with her husband. Her stories frequently appear in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review.
Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) was highly acclaimed and won the Governor General’s Literary Award, Canada’s most prestigious literary prize. This success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. In 1980 The Beggar Maid was shortlisted for the annual Booker Prize for Fiction.
Other awards Munro has won include the Marian Engel Prize, the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, the Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award and the 1978 and 1986 Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Her latest collection of short stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in October 2009. She lives in Canada.
The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2009 is: Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician; and writer, film script writer and essayist, Andrey Kurkov. The panel made the following comment on the winner:
“Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”
The Man Booker International Prize seeks to recognise a living author who has contributed significantly to world literature and to highlight the author’s continuing creativity and development on a global scale.
Peter Clarke, Chief Executive, Man Group plc comments: “Since her first collection of stories was published in 1968, Alice Munro has been highly acclaimed as the contemporary master of the short fiction genre. We are delighted to honour her as the recipient of the third Man Booker International Prize.”
Alice Munro will receive the prize of £60,000 and a trophy at the Award Ceremony on Thursday 25 June at Trinity College, Dublin.
The above text is from the official press release. Alice Munro’s work is much loved by many regular customers of the Country Bookshelf. If you are unfamiliar with her work, please come in and browse our selection.
