Canada’s Alice Munro, called the “master of the contemporary short story”, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. After that, the Nobel committee(委员会)said on Twitter that it hadn’t been able to contact Munro and left a phone message to tell her the good news. But The Canadian Press contacted her, and she was quoted as saying the award was "quite wonderful"and she was "terribly surprised".
Douglas Gibson, Munro's publisher read a statement on the author's behalf. "I am amazed and very grateful. I am particularly glad that winning this award will please so many Canadians. I'm happy that this will bring more attention to Canadian writing," she said, according to Gibson.
"Munro is acclaimed for her finely tuned storytelling,which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism(现实主义),"the Nobel committee said.
The author has won many honors over the years,including the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. "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,"the Man Booker judging committee said at the time.
Munro,who lives in Huron County in southwestern Ontario,was born near there in Wingham. She started writing stories in her teen years and studied journalism and English at the University of Western Ontario. She started publishing in various magazines in the 1950s. In 1968,she published Dance of the Happy Shades,a collection of short stories. In 1971 she published a collection of stories entitled Lives of Girls and Women,which critics have described as a coming-of-age work.
Munro gained world fame for writing about everyday people. "Here is a world prize being won by someone who writes about housewives in Vancouver, booksellers in Victoria, bean farmers in Huron County and accountants and teachers and librarians — ordinary Canadian people, and she turns them into magic," Gibson said.
【小题1】How did Alice Munro feel about her winning the Nobel Prize?