Dear Life

作者簡介

艾莉絲．孟若（Alice Munro）

　　2013年諾貝爾文學獎得主。艾莉絲．孟若自1968年初出文壇，推出處女作Dance of the Happy Shades，旋即榮獲象徵加拿大最高榮譽的總督文學獎。她創作超過四十年生涯，出版十四本短篇小說集，及一部長篇小說，至今獲獎無數，包括三座總督文學獎、吉勒文學獎、美國國家書評人獎，及2009年獲頒曼布克國際文學獎（Man Booker International Prize）。

　　擅長短篇小說經營的她被譽為當代的契軻夫，但作品內容更為日常。她的小說一貫素樸，故事人物簡單，但在平素的表象背後，是費盡工夫的結構經營、文字推敲。這些故事微小而日常，現實殘酷冷漠，作者敘事大巧若拙。

　　現年八十二歲，已臨人生暮年的艾莉絲．孟若最新作品《親愛的人生》隱微蘊含著告別的語調，她說：「這幾篇文章不算故事，倒是各成一格。在感情的層面有自傳的寫實感，可是卻不全然是真人實事。」本書的故事背景在1940至1970年代之間，書中人物都平凡無奇，卻必須忍受生命中或大或小的風暴（如經濟大恐慌、二次世界大戰、戰後的文化動亂，乃至於個人生命中的小風波等等），同時還有歲月的折騰。

　　Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published thirteen collections of stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women, and two volumes of Selected Stories. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two of its Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England’s W. H. Smith Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Man Booker International Prize. In 2013 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron.