Friend of My Youth

Stories

$12.99 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Apr 25, 2012 | 9780307814593
Sales rights: US, Opn Mkt (no CAN)
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.
  • WINNER | 2013
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2009
    Man Booker International Prize
Praise for Alice Munro

“Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does.”—Jhumpa Lahiri

“She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion.”—Jonthan Franzen

“The authority she brings to the page is just lovely.”—Elizabeth Strout

“She’s the most savage writer I’ve ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive.”—Jeffery Eugenides

“Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.”—Julian Barnes

“She is a short-story writer who . . . reimagined what a story can do.”—Lorrie Moore

“There’s probably no one alive who’s better at the craft of the short story.”—Jim Shepard

“A true master of the form.”—Salman Rushdie

“A wonderful writer.”—Joyce Carol Oates

About

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.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2013
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2009
    Man Booker International Prize

Praise

Praise for Alice Munro

“Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does.”—Jhumpa Lahiri

“She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion.”—Jonthan Franzen

“The authority she brings to the page is just lovely.”—Elizabeth Strout

“She’s the most savage writer I’ve ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive.”—Jeffery Eugenides

“Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.”—Julian Barnes

“She is a short-story writer who . . . reimagined what a story can do.”—Lorrie Moore

“There’s probably no one alive who’s better at the craft of the short story.”—Jim Shepard

“A true master of the form.”—Salman Rushdie

“A wonderful writer.”—Joyce Carol Oates