New Releases by Alice Munro

Lumen recupera una extraordinaria colección de cuentos de Alice Munro, la autora de Mi vida querida y ganadora del Premio Nobel de Literatura, donde la escritora explora el vínculo entre dos mujeres y su evolución a lo largo de los años. «¿Cómo lo hará Alice Munro? Lo que consigue parece magia». —Sara Mesa «Munro tiene una mente prodigiosa. Es precisa, natural y cuenta como nadie la interioridad y el fluir de vidas enteras en unas pocas páginas». —Rodrigo Muñoz Avia «Aprender a sobrevivir, a pesar de la cobardía y la cautela, de los sustos y la aprensión, no es lo mismo que ser desdichado. Y además es interesante». En esta serie de historias entrelazadas, Munro recrea el vínculo entre dos mujeres en el transcurso de casi cuarenta años: la pragmática, desconfiada y a veces un tanto vulgar Flo, y su hijastra, Rose, una chica torpe y tímida pero cuya ambición la empuja a dejar atrás sus raíces y emprender su propio camino. Cuento a cuento, pincelada a pincelada, la gran maestra del relato nos envuelve dentro de una narración que fluye como una novela y a la que consigue dotar de profunda emoción y trascendencia. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE Born into the back streets of a small Canadian town, Rose battled incessantly with her practical and shrewd stepmother, Flo, who cowed her with tales of her own past and warnings of the dangerous world outside. But Rose was ambitious - she won a scholarship and left for Toronto where she married Patrick. She was his Beggar Maid, 'meek and voluptuous, with her shy white feet', and he was her knight, content to sit and adore her. Alice Munro's wonderful collection of stories reads like a novel, following Rose's life as she moves away from her impoverished roots and forges her own path in the world.

ALICE MUNRO INÉDITA El aclamado primer libro de relatos de la Nobel de Literatura, ganador del Governor General’s Award La magia de Alice Munro, que han invocado tantos escritores y críticos literarios, con la que ha llenado de luz las vidas, los sentimientos y los diálogos más cotidianos, y que ha hecho de ella la mejor cuentista de la literatura contemporánea, ganadora del Nobel y del Booker, ya estaba totalmente afianzada en el primero de sus catorce libros de relatos: Danza de las sombras. Quince historias —algunas de marcado carácter autobiográfico— que revelan los múltiples matices de la naturaleza humana: una joven descubre cuánto ignora sobre su padre cuando lo acompaña a hacer su ruta de reparto como vendedor de la Walker Brothers; una mujer casada regresa a casa tras la muerte de su madre e intenta compensar a su hermana por el tiempo que ha pasado cuidando de aquella; el público de un recital de piano infantil recibe una lección sorprendente cuando una estudiante «singular» transmite una emoción inesperada al interpretar una pieza. Un libro clave en la obra de Munro, inédito hasta hoy en castellano, que obtuvo el Governor General’s Award y la consagró como la gran narradora que estaba destinada a ser. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013 In these fifteen short stories —her eighth collection of short stories in a long and distinguished career— 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. "Virtuosity, elemental command, incisive like a diamond, remarkable: all these descriptions fit Alice Munro." —The Christian Science Monitor "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

The Three Stories that Inspired the Movie With a foreword by Pedro Almodóvar Alice Munro is cherished for her exquisite, affecting meditations on the human heart. In these three linked stories, "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence"--which, together, inspired Pedro Almodóvar's film Julieta--her virtuosic talents are once again on display. The stories follow a schoolteacher named Juliet as she is swept up by fate: meeting an older man on a train and starting an affair; later, visiting her parents as a young mother; and later still, searching for contact with her estranged daughter. As with all of Munro's characters, Juliet radiates warmth, dignity, and hope, even as she is unflinching in the face of betrayal and loss. In Munro's hands, her journey is as surprising, extraordinary, and precious as life itself.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection With hardly any notice, foolish and plain housekeeper Johanna flees her employer and sets off to find the man she’s fallen in love with. Little does she know that her correspondence with him has been a complete fabrication, a cruel teenager’s idea of a practical joke. So, who will Johanna find when she steps off her train with the household furniture in tow? Alice Munro is the universally celebrated master of the contemporary short story, the Chekhov of our time. Nowhere are her powers better on display than in this exquisitely crafted story exploring the wonderful and unexpected places where love, or the illusion of it, can lead. This selection is the title story of Munro’s acclaimed collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and the basis of the 2013 film, Hateship Loveship. An ebook short.

From the 2013 Nobel laureate in Literature—and perhaps our most beloved author: a beautifully repackaged reissue of Alice Munro's Selected Stories (1968-1994), now retitled A Wilderness Station Spanning almost thirty years and settings that range from big cities to small towns and farmsteads of rural Canada, this magnificent collection brings together twenty-eight stories by a writer of unparalleled wit, generosity, and emotional power. Alice Munro makes lives that seem small unfold until they are revealed to be as spacious as prairies and locates the moments of love and betrayal, desire and forgiveness, that change those lives forever. To read these stories—about a traveling salesman and his children on an impromptu journey; an abandoned woman choosing between seduction and solitude—is to succumb to the spell of a writer who enchants her readers utterly even as she restores them to their truest selves.

Dans ce recueil de treize nouvelles, Alice Munro nous emporte avec ses personnages jusqu'aux moments charnières de leurs existences, où tout peut basculer : une mère perd la trace de son enfant, un soldat saute inopinément du train qui le ramène chez lui, une jeune professeur part enseigner dans un sanatorium reculé, une femme perdue se lie à un inconnu... Le hasard des rencontres, l'étrangeté des actes manqués, les coups funestes du destin : autant de lignes de force que Munro ausculte et nous restitue avec la grâce d'un " Tchekhov de notre temps ". Pour la première fois, elle se confie également sur sa propre vie dans une ultime nouvelle. Alice Munro est, plus que jamais, l'écrivain de l'âme humaine.

Historien om Rose er historien om en kvindes forsøg på at finde og acceptere sig selv. Hun har spillet mange roller i sit liv – men er det roller, hun selv har valgt? Har hun ikke blot altid været den, omgivelserne forventede, hun skulle være? Har hun nogen sinde været sig selv? Og hvem var hun egentlig? Det er hverdagsmennesker, Alice Munro skriver om, og hun har den sjældne evne at kunne kortlægge et helt menneskeliv, en hel skæbne i novellens korte form. At læse en novellesamling af Alice Munro er som at læse en række romaner. Ud fra en enkelt begivenhed i et menneskes liv, som viser sig at blive et vendepunkt, fx mødet med kærlighed eller utroskab, lærer læseren personen at kende til bunds; man har ikke brug for at vide mere.

La gran autora canadiense nos ofrece Mi vida querida, una colección de cuentos en los que vemos a hombres y mujeres obligados a traficar con la duda, el dolor y la decepción sin más recursos que su humanidad. ¿Bastan un beso robado, un salto desde un tren en marcha, la sombra furtiva de una mujer, una borrachera de media tarde o las preguntas arriesgadas de una niña para conformar un mundo que tenga peso propio y cuente la vida entera? Si quien escribe es Alice Munro un simple adjetivo sirve para cruzar las fronteras de la anécdota y colocarnos en el lugar donde bullen los sentimientos y las emociones. Comienzos, finales, giros del destino… y de repente, cuando creíamos que el relato llegaría a su obvia conclusión, Munro nos invita a dar otra vuelta de tuerca que cambia el fluir de los acontecimientos y emociona al lector, mostrando hasta qué punto esa vida cotidiana que tanto nos cansa puede llegar a ser extraordinaria. Cierran el volumen unas páginas que Munro dedica a su propia infancia, unas notas espléndidas donde lo personal se funde con la ficción, pues, en palabras de la misma autora “la autobiografía vive en la forma, más que en el contenido”. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013 A New York Times Notable BookA Washington Post Notable Work of FictionA Best Book of the Year: The Atlantic, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, AV Club In story after story in this brilliant new collection, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancée, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer. Illumined by Munro’s unflinching insight, these lives draw us in with their quiet depth and surprise us with unexpected turns. And while most are set in her signature territory around Lake Huron, some strike even closer to home: an astonishing suite of four autobiographical tales offers an unprecedented glimpse into Munro’s own childhood. Exalted by her clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, Dear Life shows how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.

Una colección de cuentos de la ganadora del Premio Nobel de Literatura 2013. «¿Cómo lo hará Alice Munro? Lo que consigue parece magia.» Sara Mesa Una joven madre recibe consuelo inesperado por la muerte de sus tres hijos, otra mujer reacciona de forma insólita ante la humillación a la que la somete un hombre; otros cuentos describen la crueldad de los niños y los huecos de soledad que se crean en el día a día de la vida de pareja. Como broche de oro, en el último cuento acompañamos a Sofi a Kovalevski, una matemática rusa que realmente vivió a mediados del siglo XIX, en su largo peregrinaje a través de Europa en busca de una universidad que admitiera a mujeres como profesoras, y viviremos con ella su historia de amor con un hombre que hizo lo que supo por decepcionarla. Anécdotas en apariencia banales se transforman en las manos de Munro en pura emoción, y su estilo muestra estas emociones sin dificultad, gracias a un talento excepcional que arrastra al lector dentro de las historias casi sin preámbulos. «Ella odiaba la palabra escapismo referida a la ficción. Era más bien la vida real la que merecía ser tildada de escapismo...» Estas palabras, pronunciadas por uno de sus personajes, podrían referirse a toda la prosa de Munro, que pasea heridas hondas con inteligencia e ironía, con esa hondura feroz y austera que sorprende a quien lee, como si algo de nosotros mismos que no sabíamos, que quizá no queríamos saber, de pronto se hubiera deslizado en las páginas de un libro. Reseñas: «Quisiera que mis historias tuvieran que ver con la vida, que el lector no dijera: "Venga, esto no es real", sino que hallara en ellos una recompensa, pero no porque tengan un final feliz ni nada por el estilo, sino porque todo lo que la historia cuenta lo conmueva de tal modo que se sienta una persona distinta tras la lectura.» Alice Munro, Premio Nobel de Literatura «Su obra me pareció revolucionaria cuando la descubrí, y sigue pareciéndomelo ahora. Me enseñó que un relato puede lograrlo todo. Le da la vuelta por completo a la forma. Me inspiró para ir más allá, para derribar muros. Su obra demuestra que el misterio de las relaciones humanas y de nuestra psique sigue siendo la esencia y la fuerza motora de la literatura.» Jhumpa Lahiri, The New Yorker «"Disección" es la palabra que mejor describe la obra de Munro. ¿Cómo deberíamos llamar si no a la combinación de escrutinio obsesivo, exhumación arqueológica, recuerdo preciso y detallado y obsesión por el reverso más sórdido, miserable y vengativo que subyace en la naturaleza humana, la confesión de secretos eróticos, la nostalgia por la tristeza desaparecida y el regocijo por la plenitud y la variedad de la vida?» Margaret Atwood, The New Yorker ENGLISH DESCRIPTION WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013 Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers—the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories about the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives. In the first story a young wife and mother, suffering from the unbearable pain of losing her three children, gains solace from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other tales uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and, in the long title story, the yearnings of a nineteenth-century female mathematician.

The fourteen stories in this brilliant collection show Alice Munro coming home to southwestern Ontario, with Toronto looming on the horizon. Even “To Reach Japan,” where a Vancouver mother takes her young daughter across the country by train, ends in Toronto. On that journey, different kinds of passion produce surprises, both on the journey and at its end. The range of storytellers is astonishing, as we hear the young voices of women recalling their teenage years and the equally convincing voice of an old woman fighting Alzheimer’s. Margaret Atwood once shrewdly noted that “pushing the sexual boundaries is distinctly thrilling for many a Munro woman,” and very few of these stories deal with men and women in sedate, conventional domestic settings. Munro admirers will see that these stories are shorter than many in her recent col­lections, but they have all the sharpness, accessibility, and power of her earlier work, and they are—as always—full of “real” people. The final four works (“not quite stories”) bring the author home, literally. She writes: “I believe they are the first and last—and the closest—things I have to say about my own life.”

A “wickedly funny” (Newsweek) collection of ten short stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “one of the most eloquent and gifted writers of contemporary fiction” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). “Each of her collections demonstrates such linguistic skill, delicacy of vision, and . . . moral strength and clarity.”—Chicago Tribune A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband’s past—and instead discovering unsetting truths about a total stranger. The miraculously accomplished stories in this collection not only astonish and delight, but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience. The mastery—the almost numinous ability to say the unsayable—makes Friend of My Youth a genuine literary event.

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.

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.”

“An exhilarating collection” (The New York Times Book Review) of ten blended stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro “The rich texture of its narrative and the author’s graceful style make [The Beggar Maid] a considerable accomplishment.”—Joyce Carol Oates, Ms. In this vibrant series of interweaving stories, Alice Munro recreates the evolving bond—one that is both constricting and empowering—between two women in the course of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people’s airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. The other is Rose, Flo’s stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow—in spite of Flo’s ridicule and ghastly warnings—leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world.

Eleven “witty, subtle, [and] passionate” (The New York Times Book Review) stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “a true master of the form” (Salman Rushdie) “Alice Munro’s fine and intelligent stories are like Edward Hopper paintings, lit with a relentless clarity, and richly illuminating the perplexities of human connection, their possibilities and pain.”—Washington Post Book World In these piercingly lovely and endlessly surprising stories by one of the most acclaimed practitioners of the art of fiction, many things happen; there are betrayals and reconciliations, love affairs consummated and mourned. But the true events in The Moons of Jupiter are the ways in which the characters are transformed over time, coming to view their past selves with anger, regret, and infinite compassion that communicate themselves to us with electrifying force.

There is a remarkable magic in these eight matchless stories—stories set in Ontario, Australia, Europe; in dangerous mountains, forbidding wilderness, familiar towns. In the title story, a lawyer’s wife has a flash of insight—illogical, unprovable, and terrifying—into the fate of a missing teenager; in another, the appearance of a long-dead visitor reveals the grip of a former love. Munro tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor. Yet the true magic lies in the way that Alice Munro makes everything here—unexpected marriages, elopements, acts of sudden vengeance—unfold with the ease of the inevitable. This is the mark of a great writer, and it is stamped on every page of this book.

Quando si chiude ogni libro di Alice Munro - afferma la giuria di uno dei tanti premi da lei ricevuti - «si sa molto ma molto di più su quel che significa essere umani».

It presents stories about Svengali men, and radical women who outmanoeuvre them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments which change or haunt a life. A wife and mother, whose spirit has been crushed, finds release from her extraordinary pain in the most unlikely place. The young victim of a humiliating seduction finds an unusual way to get her own back and move on. An older woman, dying of cancer, weaves a poisonous story to save her life. The long title story follows Sophia Kovalevsky, a late nineteenth-century Russian emigree and mathematical genius, as she takes a fateful winter journey that begins with a visit to her lover on the Riviera, and ends in Sweden, where she is a professor at the only university willing to hire a woman to teach her subject.

My Best Stories is a dazzling selection of stories—seventeen favourites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. The stories are arranged in the order in which they were written, allowing even the most devoted Munro admirer to discover how her work developed. "Royal Beatings" shows us right away how far we are from the romantic world of happy endings. "The Albanian Virgin" smashes the idea that all of her stories are set in B.C. or in Ontario's "Alice Munro Country." "A Wilderness Station" breaks short story rules by transporting us back to the 1830s and then jumping forward more than a hundred years. And the final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," which was adapted into the film Away from Her, leads us far beyond the turkey-plucking world of young girls into unflinching old age. Every story in this selection is superb. It is a book to read—and reread—very slowly, savouring each separate story. This collection of small masterpieces deserves a place in every book lover's home.

Elles partent. Fuguent. S'enfuient. S'en vont voir ailleurs. Elles : des femmes comme les autres. Par usure ou par hasard, un beau matin, elles quittent le domicile familial (ou conjugal), sans se retourner. En huit nouvelles, Alice Munro met en scène ces vies bouleversées. Avec légèreté, avec férocité, elle traque les marques laissées sur les visages par le temps, les occasions perdues, les petits arrangements que l'on croyait provisoires.

Rose and her stepmother, Flo, live in Hanratty-across the bridge from the "good" part of town. Rose, alternately fascinated and appalled by the rude energy of the people around her, grows up nursing her hope of outgrowing her humble beginnings and plotting an escape to university. Rose makes her escape and thinks herself free. But Hanratty's question-Who Do You Think You Are?-rings in her ears during her days in Vancouver, mocks her attempts to make her marriage successful, and haunts her new career. In these stories of Rose and Flo, Alice Munro explores the universal story of growing up-Rose's struggle to accept herself tells the story of our lives.

A true literary event, the publication of this generous selection of stories--drawn from Alice Munro's seven collections spanning 30 years--gives enormous reading pleasure while it confirms Munro's place in the front ranks of today's writers of fiction. These 28 stories about lovers, parents and children, sex, seduction, marriage, murder, dreams, and death are pure essence of Munro.

"Lives of Girls and Women" is the intensely readable, touching, and very funny story of Del Jordan, a young woman who journeys from the carelessness of childhood through an uneasy adolescence in search of love and sexual experience. As Del dreams of becoming famous, suffers embarrassment about her mother, endures the humiliation of her body's insistent desires, and tries desperately to fall in love, she grapples with the crises that mark the passage to womanhood. Penguin Group (Canada) has published this edition of "Lives of Girls and Women" in a traditional Penguin design in celebration of being named 2008 Publisher of the Year.