The once-in-a-generation genius of Alice Munro

In the early 2000s, a young Canadian writer who shall remain nameless found herself in the backseat of a car with her hero, the legendary Alice Munro. A local volunteer had picked them both up at the train station and was delivering them to the Eden Mills Festival, not far from Clinton, in rural south-western Ontario, the tiny farm town where Munro lived quietly for decades with her second husband. The volunteer explained she just had one more errand to run – she needed to pick up the samosas for dinner while they were still hot – and then they would all carry on the festival. The younger writer was nervous to find herself suddenly alone in close quarters with her idol. What on earth would they talk about? 

It’s worth nothing here that long before winning the Nobel in 2013, Munro was regarded as a reticent, self-effacing sort of genius in Canadian literary circles.