A wide and disparate array of names was floating as likely candidates when this year’s Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Alice Munro. Like many of her staunch admirers, I had not thought of including her name among the favourites. Had there been a bookie in the vicinity, I would have placed my bet on Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist whom I admire immensely and was fervently arguing for with a friend who remained unimpressed with his Kafka on the Shore.

I thought of Adonis, the senior Arabic poet, whose name keeps appearing regularly and the impeccable Milan Kundera who should have received the Nobel honour many years ago, in my opinion. The newspapers carried many names and some odd central European could have easily caused an upset.

But Alice Munro, a quiet yet a formidable presence, emerged from the shadows to claim her rightful place among the major fiction writers of this day and age.

Critics and literary commentators joined in as accolades started pouring in from all over the world. Clear and distinct among these was the voice of fellow Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, whose joining the Nobel company is a matter of time only. Atwood could easily have been Munro’s arch rival for the top position in the country’s literary establishment but she has been loud in her admiration for Munro’s work and poise.

Atwood has also authored an in-depth appreciation of Munro’s work and edited a volume of her stories. This time too she was loud in acclaiming her joy and her appreciation. ‘Alice Munro’s Road to Nobel Literature Prize was Not Easy’ was carried by several newspapers, including the London-based The Guardian. Atwood took a lot of pride in Munro’s honour and part of that pride was Canadian. “Quintessentially Canadian,” was how she described Munro’s attitude and pointed out that “while Munro has long been recognised in North America and the UK, […] the Nobel will draw international attention to women’s writing and Canadian writing.” Also importantly, she added that it will draw attention to “the short story, Munro’s chosen métier and one often overlooked.” It is this aspect which has a special significance for us, making Munro more relevant and meaningful.

“Deliriously incredible” was how critic James Wood, the writer of How Fiction Works, described the Nobel announcement of this year. His fine essay in The New Yorker managed to catch a certain elusive quality in Munro. “Many of Monro’s readers had sadly concluded that she was not, somehow, the kind of writer that the Nobel committee seemed to like; I had decided that she would join the list of noble non-Nobelists, a distinguished category that includes Tolstoy, Nabokov, Borges, Hrabal, Sebald, Bernhard — and Chekhov, as it happens.”

The reference to Chekhov is particularly apt as Chekhov is the writer most often invoked while talking about Munro and her stories are often regarded as Chekhovian. “Few contemporary writers are more admired, and with good reason,” proclaims Wood but then adds almost in anger: “Everyone gets called ‘our Chekhov,’” and his anger could be directed straight to Urdu critics of not too long ago. “All you have to do nowadays is write a few half-decent stories and you are ‘our Chekhov.’” He keeps Munro away from such empty claims. “But Alice Munro really is our Chekhov — which is to say, the English language’s Chekhov.” High praise indeed coming from a perceptive critic, although I wouldn’t go so far and call her a Chekhov. Only Anton Chekhov is our and everybody else’s Chekhov and Alice Munro is a powerful writer in her own self.

The New Yorker reprinted Munro’s short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ and Wood’s all too brief essay includes a fine reading of the story which he regards to be “one of Munro’s finest.” The light and easy opening paragraph introduces a husband and wife living together but before the paragraph is finished you realise that they have grown old and reached the period of decline. The best of their lives is caught in the economical and finely wrought paragraph. And everything else which follows will be heartbreaking.

Munro is unique among contemporary writers that the short story is her mainstay. Even the other contender for the title of ‘the finest living short story writer in the English language,’ Ireland’s William Trevor, has authored several novels. Munro has stayed away from the longer form and manages to fill a lifetime of pain and un-fulfillment in the 20 or 30 pages of a short story. Her other great strength is her locale. She writes of small towns in the Ontario region where she was born. The small town setting made some critics see her work as “domestic,” complains Atwood. However, the emotions she draws upon are as universal as they can be. The title of one of her collections is very appropriate. It is called Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and this could describe her range of themes.

A sense of the place informs many of Munro’s stories, especially when the characters lead isolated or desolate lives. A farm where foxes are bred for their fur is the setting of one of her early stories and in a story like ‘The Turkey Season,’ the characters are “turkey gutters” who clean the insides of turkeys with a skill and precision vividly described and which throws into sharp contrast the subdued violence of their suppressed lives.

Also the recipient of the prestigious Man Booker International, Alice Munro had shocked the literary world when she recently announced her plans of retirement. Her latest collection Dear Life included four stories which she described in an interview as “the first and last and closest things I have to say about my own life.” For the people who will be disappointed in not having new stories of hers to read, she said: “tell them to go read the old ones over again. There’s lots of them.” New and old, her stories invite reading and reading all over again.

The writer is a novelist, short story writer and critic