Canadian short-story writer, 82, was one of favourites to win honour, awarded in same year she announced retirement

Munro is the second Canadian-born writer to win be awarded the Nobel prize for literature – after Saul Bellow – and the 13th woman. “Can this be possible?” she asked. “Really? It seems dreadful there’s only 13 of us.”

With her acceptance of the 8m Swedish krona (£775,000) prize she joins a rollcall of 110 past winners including Thomas Mann, Harold Pinter, Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus and Ernest Hemingway.

Frequently compared to Chekhov and Mansfield for the deft originality of her short stories, she had always been among the favourites to win, alongside novelist Haruki Murakami and Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich.

It is a victory that has delighted many of her literary colleagues as well as her devoted readership – to whom she has always seemed something of a cherished secret. That she has been frequently omitted from conventional lists of the greatest writers of her age is perhaps because of her chosen form, the short story, as well as the apparent narrowness of her palette, since most of her works explore the warp and weft of smalltown life in Western Ontario. More.

See: The Guardian

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