The View from Castle Rock

　　艾莉絲．孟若(Alice Munro)被譽為加拿大當代最傑出的短篇小說家，2009年擊敗奈波爾與喬伊斯．卡洛．奧茲等人，榮獲第三屆布克國際文學獎(Man Booker International Prize)。布克國際文學獎每兩年頒發一次，此獎候選人不分國籍，入選資格以曾發表英文作品的作家為主，第一、二屆得主分別為阿爾巴尼亞作家伊斯梅爾．卡達萊(Ismail Kadare)和尼日利亞作家齊努亞．阿奇貝(Chinua Achebe)。

　　Alice Munro mines her rich family background, melding it with her own experiences and the transforming power of her brilliant imagination, to create perhaps her most powerful and personal collection yet.

　　A young boy, taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro’s art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives.

作者簡介

艾莉絲．孟若(Alice Munro)

　　在加拿大安大略省的溫文鎮長大，進過西安大略省大學。已出版的短篇小說集包括《出走》、《感情遊戲》、《快樂色調之舞》、《我一直想告訴你的一件事》、《乞丐女僕》、《木星的月亮》、《愛情進展》、《我年輕時的朋友》、《公開的秘密》、她的《短篇選集》和《一位好女子的愛》，再加上長篇小說《女孩和女人的生活》。在傑出的寫作生涯中得過許多國際文學獎，包括加拿大的總督總文學獎和格勒爾獎(Giller Prize)，和美國國家書獎的書評人獎，2009年並榮獲第三屆布克國際文學獎(Man Booker International Prize)。

　　Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven new collections of stories-Dance of the Happy Shades; Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You; The Beggar Maid; The Moons of Jupiter; The Progress of Love; Friend of My Youth; Open Secrets; The Love of a Good Woman; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Runaway; and a volume of Selected Stories-as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the Man Booker International Prize, 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 United States' National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Edward MacDowell Medal in literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages.