Too Much Happiness (Vintage International)

Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers—the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize.

In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky—a late-nineteenth-century Russian émigré and mathematician—on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.

With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives.

Too Much Happiness is a compelling, provocative—even daring—collection.

From the Hardcover edition.

艾丽丝•门罗（Alice Munro，1931— ）

加拿大女作家，当代短篇小说大师，2013年诺贝尔文学奖得主。少女时代即开始写作，37岁时出版第一部作品。她一生专注于中短篇小说创作，讲述小地方普通人特别是女性隐含悲剧的平常生活，以细腻透彻又波澜不惊的话语，洞见人性的幽微处。