Alice Munro

Alice Munro has long been heralded for her penetrating, lyrical prose, and in "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" - the basis for Sarah Polley's film "Away From Her" -- her prodigious talents are once again on display. As she follows Grant, a retired professor whose wife Fiona begins gradually to lose her memory and drift away from him, we slowly see how a lifetime of intimate details can create a marriage, and how mysterious the bonds of love really are.

John Winslow Irving er født i Exeter, New Hampshire, i 1942. Han debuterte med romanen Setting Free the Bears i 1968. Senere kom mer kjente romaner – f.eks. Garps bok, Hotell New Hampshire og Siderhusreglene – som alle er filmatisert. John Irving er i dag bosatt i Toronto og Vermont. John Irving har valgt en av sine favorittforfattere, Alice Munro, og hennes novellesamling Den albanske jomfru og andre fortellinger (norsk utg. 1996). Om denne skrev Terje Holtet Larsen i Dagbladet: «Å lese Alice Munros noveller er en påminnelse om hvor oppsiktsvekkende få bøker det egentlig er som virkelig gjør inntrykk på en.» Novellene til Munro er imidlertid ikke oppsiktsvekkende i sin ytre dramatikk. Historiene er lavmælte, gjerne lagt til søvnige småbyer i utkant-Canada, og rollefigurene er ’vanlige’ kvinner og menn. Men hun fanger leseren etter få sider. Og det er få som kan skildre så finstemt relasjoner mellom mennesker, få gir så presise beskrivelser av hvordan mennesker tenker og reagerer. Alice Munro (f. 1931) debuterte med novellesamlingen Dance of the Happy Shades i 1968. Da hadde hun publisert korthistorier i ulike magasiner helt siden 1950. Og ser man bort fra romanen Lives of Girls and Women, har hun forblitt tro mot den korte formen. Den hittil siste novellesamlingen hennes, Rømlingen (norsk utg. 2006), fikk kritikerne til nesten å gå av skaftet.Hjemmeside om Alice MunroIntervju med Alice Munro"Noveller på Nobel-nivå" – Anmeldelse av Munros siste novellesamling, Rømlingen, i Dagbladet

«Les Alice Munro. Kanskje møter du forfatteren i ditt liv.» Anne Merete K. Prinos, Aftenposten Terningkast 6. «Alice Munro i en klasse for seg selv.» Annelise Knutsen, Fredriksstad Blad «Den vidunderlige Alice. Alice Munro er en mester når det gjelder å skape situasjoner som tilsynelatende er betydningsløse, men som likevel er små, skarpe lynglimt, avslørende og oppklarende.» Turid Larsen, Dagsavisen «Det er lett å forstå hvorfor Alice Munros navn så ofte blir nevnt i sammenheng med Alfred Nobels.» Ane Farsethås, Dagens Næringsliv «De er foruroligende, tragiske og vakre, novellene til Alice Munro. Men først og fremst er de drivende gode.» Anne Cathrine Straume, NRK P2 «Alice Munro har skrevet glitrende noveller . igjen.» Kaja Schjerven Mollerin, Klassekampen «Mesterlig av Munro. Alice Munro (f. 1931) har allerede lenge vært en klassiker og en legende, men hun later likevel til å bli klokere og dypere for hver bok .» Erik Bjerck Hagen, Morgenbladet «Gi meg en øde øy og resten av bøkene til Alice Munro, så kan jeg godt lage talglys av Robinson!» Stein Roll, Adresseavisen

An array of short fiction, selected by the author and spanning the full range of her career, encompasses seventeen stories, drawn from such collections as The Beggar Maid, The Moons of Jupiter, and Runaway.

Himmel und Hölle: Neun Geschichten, scheinbar alltäglich-harmlos wie ein Kinderspiel. So wie die Geschichte der Hausangestellten, die von zwei Teenagern auf fatale Weise in die Irre geschickt wird, doch dank ihrer Willenskraft ihrem verkümmerten Leben eine höchst überraschende Wendung zu geben vermag. Verdrängte Schuld, die heimlich weiterwirkt, rätselvolle Beziehungen, bestürzend kühne Momente des Ausbrechens aus dem eigenen Lebenskonzept: das ist der Stoff, aus dem Alice Munros Erzählungen sind.

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**The matchless Munro makes art out of everyday lives in this exquisite short story collection.

A new collection of short fiction by the acclaimed author of The Love of a Good Woman captures the lives of women of all ages and circumstances, as they deal with the limits and lies of passion, unfulfilled dreams, motherhood, betrayal, and the bonds of love--between men and women, friends, and parents and children. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

Alice Munro ist die Meisterin der Ambivalenz. Komik und Tragik, scheinbar Alltägliches und Schicksalhaftes mischen sich in ihren Erzählungen und locken den Leser in ein Reich dunkler Ahnungen.

The incomparable Alice Munro's bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about women of all ages and circumstances--and about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises. The runaway of the title story is a young woman who is incapable of leaving her husband. In "Passion," a country girl emerging into the larger world via a job in a resort hotel discovers, in a single moment of insight, the limits and lies of passion. Three stories concern a woman named Juliet--in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories, Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.

A "masterful" (Houston Post) collection of stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro "A spellbinding tour through a world of love, menace, and surprise . . . Munro] is a writer of enormous gifts and perception."--Los Angeles Times The sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts, grandmothers, and friends in these thirteen stories, "a rich exploration of womanhood" (Ms.), shimmer with hope and love, anger and reconciliation, as they content with their histories and their present, and what they can see of the future. In her remarkable second collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique hailed by John Updike, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review that "one must go back to Tolstoy and Chekhov . . . for comparable largeness."

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**The characters who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe.

Drei Erzählungen und ein kurzer Roman abgründige Geschichten, die wie Idyllen beginnen , Kammerspiele des Gefühls und dabei sprachliche Kunstwerke. Alice Munro, laut A. S. Byatt die größte lebende Geschichtenerzählerin, erweist sich einmal mehr als Meisterin des subtilen Schauders, Meisterin der Andeutung und der Auslassung.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro come nine short stories with "the intimacy of a family photo album and the organic feel of real life" (The New York Times) "In Munro's hands, as in Chekhov's, a short story is more than big enough to hold the world--and to astonish us, again and again."--Chicago Tribune FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY In the nine breathtaking stories that make up this collection, Alice Munro creates narratives that loop and swerve like memory, conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves. The fate of a strong-minded housekeeper with a "frizz of reddish hair," just entering the dangerous country of old-maidhood, is unintentionally (and deliciously) reversed by a teenaged girl's practical joke. A college student visiting her aunt for the first time and recognizing the family furniture stumbles on a long-hidden secret and its meaning in her own life. An inveterate philanderer finds the tables turned when he puts his wife into an old-age home. A young cancer patient stunned by good news discovers a perfect bridge to her suddenly regained future. A woman recollecting an afternoon's wild lovemaking with a stranger realizes how the memory of that encounter has both changed for her and sustained her through a lifetime. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best--tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.

In this collection of Munro's stories, whole lives come into focus through single events or sudden memories that bring the past bubbling up to the surface. And as her characters discover, the past is made up not only of what is remembered, but also what isn't.

The debut novel from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, "one of the most eloquent and gifted writers of contemporary fiction" (The New York Times). "Munro has an unerring talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary."--Newsweek Rural Ontario, 1940s. Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father's fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women--her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence. Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.

Eleven stunning stories that explore the most intimate and transforming moments of existence, from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, "one of the foremost practitioners of the short story" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). "Throughout this remarkable collection moments of insight flash from the pages like lightning, not necessarily providing answers--more like showing the way to new questions."--The Philadelphia Inquirer A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes to the shaken mother the fragility between children and parents. A young man, remembering a terrifying childhood incident, wrestles with the responsibility he has always felt for his hapless younger brother. A man brings his lover on a visit to his ex-wife, only to feel unexpectedly closer to his estranged partner. In these and other stories, Alice Munro proves once again a sensitive and compassionate chronicler of our times. Drawing us into the most intimate corners of ordinary lives, she reveals much about ourselves, our choices, and our experiences of love.

Here are women behaving badly, leaving husbands and children, running off with unstuitable lovers, pushing everyday life to the limits, and if they don't behave badly, they think surprising and disturbing thoughts.

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**Alice Munro's territory is the farms and semi-rural towns of south-western Ontario. And in sensitively exploring the lives of ordinary men and women, she makes us aware of the universal nature of their fears, sorrows and aspirations.

In eight "riveting and] lovely" (San Francisco Chronicle) stories, Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro stunningly explores the strange, often comical desires of the human heart. "Superb . . . dazzling . . . Munro's feel for her own characters is as pure as Chekhov's."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "Munro is indisputably a master. . . . A better book of stories can scarcely be imagined."--The Washington Post Book World Mining the silences and dark discretions of provincial life, the eight tales in The Love of a Good Woman lay bare the seamless connections and shared guilt that bind even the loneliest of individuals. A stroke victim expresses his deepest secret to a young bride in what may be the last act of intimacy left in him. A daughter confronts her father with the open secret of his life. And in the riveting title story, a selfless nurse tending a dying patient discovers the social utility of lies. Sparklingly detailed, unwaveringly courageous, these are stories that extend the limits of fiction.

Fifteen stunning short stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, "a true master of the form" (Salman Rushdie). "How does one know when one is in the grip of art--of a major talent? . . . It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro's stories."--The Wall Street Journal A young girl gets an unexpected glimpse into her father's past when she realizes the sales call they've made one summer afternoon during the Great Depression is to his old sweetheart. A married woman, returning home after the death of her invalid mother, tries to release the sister who'd stayed behind as their mother's caretaker. The audience at a children's piano recital receives a surprising lesson in the power of art to transform when a not-quite-right student performs with unexpected musicality and a spirit of joy. In Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.