Munro pips Mahasweta, Naipaul to win Booker prize

Alice Munro, one of Canada's most celebrated writers, has pipped Mahasweta Devi and V S Naipaul to win the third Man Booker International Prize.

Devi and Naipaul were among 13 other writers who were shortlisted for the award this year.

The prize worth 60,000 pound ($95,000) is awarded once every two years to recognise a living author for his/her contribution to literature and to highlight the author's creativity and development on a global scale. It was first awarded to Ismail Kadare in 2005.

The 77-year-old author, popular for her short stories, said: "I am totally amazed and delighted."

The judging panel which included Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician and Andrey Kurkov, essay and film script writer, praised Munro saying she "brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels".

"To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before," the panel said.

Peter Clarke, Chief Executive, Man Group plc said: "Since her first collection of stories was published in 1968, Alice Munro has been highly acclaimed as the contemporary master of the short fiction genre."

Munro's stories frequently appear in publications such as 'The New Yorker', 'The Atlantic Monthly', 'Grand Street', 'Mademoiselle', and 'The Paris Review'.

Her first collection of stories, 'Dance of the Happy Shades' (1968) was highly acclaimed and won the Governor General's Literary Award, Canada's most prestigious literary prize.

Her success was followed by 'Lives of Girls and Women' (1971), which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. In 1980, 'The Beggar Maid' was shortlisted for the annual Booker Prize for Fiction.

Munro will receive the prize at the Award Ceremony on June 25 at Trinity College, Dublin.