41ARTICLES
2022, Vol. 19 (1), 41-52(126)
journals.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.19.1.41-52
UDC: 81’255.4:821.111(71).09-32Munro A.=163.6 
Tjaša Mohar
University of Maribor, Slovenia
Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book 
Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the representation of Alice Munro’s writing in Slovenia, focusing 
on the issues of its late introduction to Slovene readers, and the low level of interest by 
Slovene publishers in her works even now that she is a Nobel laureate. To address these issues, 
two important features of her writing – that she is exclusively a short-story writer and that 
her stories deal mostly with women’s themes – will be analysed against the background of 
the tradition of the short story genre and women’s literature in Slovenia. Additionally, the 
specifics of the Slovene book market and publishing industry will be examined as another 
potential reason for the underrepresentation of Munro’s works in Slovenia.
Keywords: Alice Munro, Slovene translation, publishing, Nobel laureate, book market
Usoda nobelovke na majhnem knjižnem trgu: Alice Munro 
v slovenskem prevodu
IZVLEČEK
Prispevek proučuje zastopanost literarnih del Alice Munro v Sloveniji. Posebej se osredotoča 
na vprašanji, zakaj je bila avtorica tako pozno predstavljena slovenskim bralcem in zakaj je 
tudi zdaj, ko je nobelovka, zgolj malo zanimanja za njena dela med slovenskimi založniki. V 
iskanju odgovorov na vprašanji bomo analizirali dve pomembni značilnosti njene pisave – in 
sicer da je avtorica izključno kratkih zgodb in da se v svojih zgodbah večinoma ukvarja z 
ženskimi temami – v sklopu tradicije kratke zgodbe in ženske književnosti v Sloveniji. Poleg 
tega bomo raziskali še posebnosti slovenskega knjižnega trga in založništva kot dodatni razlog 
za slabo zastopanost avtoričinih del v slovenskem prevodu. 
Ključne besede: Alice Munro, slovenski prevod, založništvo, nobelovka, knjižni trg
42 Tjaša Mohar Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
1 Introduction
Alice Munro’s first short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), won Canada’s 
most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General’s Award, and marked the beginning 
of her successful literary career. Publications of her stories in The New Yorker magazine soon 
brought Munro recognition and popularity among American readers. Of fourteen short story 
collections (and a few compilations) that Munro published in her long writing career, several 
received prestigious literary awards. In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International 
Prize (now the International Booker Prize), which consolidated her international fame. Her 
first, very modest introduction to Slovene readers happened in 2003, when the Slovene 
translation of the story “The Office” was published in a literary magazine. It took seven more 
years for the first Munro collection to appear in Slovene translation. In 2010, two collections 
were published in Slovene: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and Too Much 
Happiness. Following Munro’s award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013, three more 
translations of her short story collections followed: Dear Life in 2014, Runaway in 2015, 
and The View from Castle Rock in 2017. Although all Slovene translations received favourable 
reviews, interest in further translation of her works has waned since 2017. The questions that 
arise here are why Munro was introduced to Slovene readers so late, and why – after a short 
period of increased interest in her works following her winning of the Nobel Prize – Slovene 
publishers are no longer interested in publishing her works.
Munro’s late arrival to Slovenia is not an isolated case in this part of Europe. The results of a 
project launched by the Central European Association for Canadian Studies (CEACS) show a 
similar situation in other Central European countries participating in the project, those being 
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia. Among these countries, Serbia 
was the first to translate a short story collection by Munro; this was Runaway, which was 
translated into Serbian in 2006. The Hungarian translation of the same collection followed in 
2007, while Munro first appeared in Croatian and Czech in 2011, and in Slovak only in 2014. 
A comparison with European countries that have a larger readership1 suggests that Munro’s 
late introduction to these Central European countries is connected with these countries’ 
small book markets. However, the situation is more complex than that, for despite Munro’s 
late arrival to Hungary, Serbia and the Czech Republic, she is now quite well represented 
in these languages (eleven collections have been translated into Hungarian and eight into 
Serbian and into Czech), while in Croatia, as in Slovenia, five Munro collections have been 
translated thus far, and in Slovakia only four.2 Since the sizes of the book markets in these 
last three countries are comparable, the reasons for the low level of interest in Munro’s works 
among the publishers might be connected with these counties’ translation and publishing 
policies. This paper will focus on the case of Slovenia only and will investigate the dynamics 
of the Slovene publishing industry (section 4) as one possible reason for the modest interest 
in Munro’s works among Slovene publishers. Additionally, it will analyse two other potential 
1 Munro first appeared in Spanish in 1971, in French in 1979, in German in 1981, and in Italian in 1989. Almost all 
her short story collections are now available in these languages.
2 Data on translations of Munro collections into these Central European languages has been obtained from the 
Translation Research Project Database of the CEACS (http://www.cecanstud.cz/index.php/en/translation-research-
project-database).
43ARTICLES
reasons for Munro’s late arrival to Slovenia and the underrepresentation of her works in the 
Slovene book market: the author’s predilection for women’s themes (section 2) and the fact 
that she is exclusively a short-story writer (section 3).
2 Munro as a Representative of Women’s Literature 
Alice Munro declared in 1972 that she was “generally sympathetic to the Women’s Liberation 
Movement” (Nischik 2007, 207); however, she was never actively engaged in feminist 
activism and always tended to avoid “public causes, controversies and arguments” (Sheldrick 
Ross 1992, 84). Nevertheless, Munro’s writing clearly testifies to her gender awareness and 
offers a female perspective on life, which, as Nischik (2007, 207) observes, has made Munro 
popular among feminist readers and critics. Munro’s second short story collection, Lives of 
Girls and Women (1971) even became “a 1970s feminist cri de coeur” (Thacker 2011, 11) 
because it addressed several feminist themes. However, Munro has not been popular only 
among declared feminists but among women in general, for her writing “has the potential 
of speaking to many kinds of women” (Redekop 1992, xii). Critics have identified multiple 
women’s themes in Munro’s writing, such as problematic communication between the sexes, 
and the nature of romantic love (Gadpaille 1988), mother figures within the patriarchal 
society (Redekop 1992), women’s bodies, and women’s romantic fantasies (Howells 1998), 
restrictive patterns of socialization for girls, and gendered issues regarding professions (Nischik 
2007). Additionally, Munro’s narrative technique has been identified as forming a feminist 
meta-narrative that displays the woman’s way of thinking (Elliott 1996), and as a “subversive 
tool for exposing and undermining rigid patriarchal structures” (Löschnigg 2016, 62). 
Munro explored the restrictive patterns of socialization of girls particularly in her early stories, 
such as “Boys and Girls” and “Red Dress” (Dance of the Happy Shades), and stories published 
in the collections Lives of Girls and Women and Who Do You Think You Are? She returned 
to this theme in stories published in later collections, such as “Meneseteung” (Friend of My 
Youth), “Lying Under the Apple Tree” (The View from Castle Rock), and “Haven” (Dear Life). 
Romantic relationships represent a common theme in Munro’s stories throughout her career. 
In some of these stories, women’s romantic fantasies are – at least partly – fulfilled (“How I 
Met My Husband”), in others the fairy-tale plot is reversed (“The Beggar Maid”, “Passion”) 
or spoiled by fate (“Simon’s Luck”, “Tricks”). Several stories feature wives and mothers from 
the period of the 1950s to the 1970s, women who feel trapped in the limited roles society 
ascribes to them. They are unhappy in their marriages (“Miles City, Montana”) and sometimes 
commit adultery (“Oranges and Apples”, “To Reach Japan”), or divorce their husbands and 
go with another man (“The Children Stay”, “Gravel”). A few stories set in the 1950s to 1970s 
period problematize gender issues related to professions, for instance those that feature a 
woman trying to follow a profession of which her family or the society disapproves (“The 
Office”, “Haven”), or a woman who is required to quit her job once she marries (“Friend of 
My Youth”, “Chaddeleys and Flemings”). 
Munro’s writing clearly reflects what the place of women was in the patriarchal Western society 
of the second half of the 20th century (particularly stories set in the 50s, 60s and 70s) and thus 
strongly resonates with issues that the second feminist movement addressed. In the communist 
44 Tjaša Mohar Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
and socialist countries of the East, women’s position in society was different from that of 
women in the West, and there was no feminist movement like that in the West. Women in 
the East thus could not easily identify with Munro’s heroines, since they did not share their 
experiences. To be able to consider Munro’s portrayal of women within the Western society as 
one reason that her works were not introduced to Slovene readers earlier, we need to consider 
the tradition of women’s literature in Slovenia in the second half of the 20th century.   
Silvija Borovnik argues that one cannot analyse Slovene women’s literature from the period 
after World War II until 19903 without considering the position of women in society in this 
period (1995, 12), particularly within the framework of communist ideology as the official 
ideology in Slovenia and Yugoslavia at the time (1995, 21). As Vlasta Jalušič (1998, 118) 
observes, in socialist countries that emerged after World War II, a women’s movement outside 
the Communist Party was not allowed; women’s associations could be established only within 
the existing Communist Party, where they propagated the image “of the female worker as a 
liberated woman” (1998, 118). Milica Antić Gaber (2004, 80) reports that women’s endeavours 
within the Communist Party in Slovenia were quite successful because the efforts for improving 
the position of women in society were viewed as part of a larger struggle for improving the 
position of people in society in general. However, as Antić Gaber (2004, 82) further points 
out, this kind of ‘state feminism’ ended in the second half of the 1980s, when the liberalisation 
of social relations enabled the emergence of various civil groups, including those representing 
women’s cause. Jalušič (1998, 61) reports that after the fall of socialism, there was a tendency 
in all Eastern European countries to reject feminism, for it was seen as only another form 
of unification. However, as Jalušič (1998, 82–83) further explains, in all Eastern European 
countries that became democracies, gender discrimination was constitutionally prohibited and 
was therefore no longer considered an issue that needed to be addressed. 
The absence of a proper feminist movement in Slovenia under the socialist regime explains the 
lack of interest in women’s literature in Slovenia in this period, for, as Borovnik (1995, 9– 10) 
points out, women writers were much fewer than male writers, and little was known about 
their writing until recently. It was only after 1980 that the number of female novelists 
increased significantly, and at that point they distanced themselves from fixed literary patterns 
to include new, previously taboo topics, such as the notion of the female, women’s behaviour 
patterns, and stereotyped images of women in the media (Borovnik 2012, 47). However, 
Slovene literary criticism still focused primarily on male authors, even after the further 
increase in the number of female writers at the turn to the 21st century (Borovnik 2012, 73). 
Katja Mihurko Poniž explains that feminist literary criticism in Slovenia emerged with a 
two-decade delay in comparison to the West (2005, 89); however, nowadays it represents a 
legitimate part of literary criticism (2013, 210) and testifies to a growing interest in research 
on women authors (2013, 212). 
Literature by Slovene women authors was thus underrepresented in Slovenia during the 
socialist regime. What was the situation with Slovene translations of literary works by 
prominent foreign female writers? Data obtained from COBISS (the central on-line 
3 Slovenia gained independence in June 1991 and at that time entered a transition period from socialism to a market 
economy, which lasted till 1999.
45ARTICLES
catalogue of Slovene libraries) shows that translations of literary works dealing explicitly 
with feminist concerns were also scarce in the period between World War II and 1990. 
Simone de Beauvoir’s gender study The Second Sex (Le deuxième sexe) was first translated into 
Slovene only in 1999, half a century after it was written (and was republished in Slovene 
in 2013 and 2014). However, two translations of de Beauvoir’s works did appear earlier: 
her novel Les mandarins was translated in 1971 and her autobiography La force de l’âge in 
1986. Hélène Cixous’s feminist essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” (“Le rire de la meduse”), 
originally published in 1975, was translated into Slovene only in 2005. Virginia Woolf ’s 
works were somewhat better represented in Slovene translation in the socialist period. Mrs. 
Dalloway from 1925 was translated into Slovene in 1965 (and republished in 1987). This 
novel was also included in the “Sto romanov”4 collection, which consisted of the best one 
hundred novels of world literature. Woolf ’s Orlando was translated into Slovene in 1974 
(republished in 2004), The Waves in 1986, and To the Lighthouse in 1988. However, Woolf ’s 
most feminist text, A Room of One’s Own, appeared in Slovene only in 1998. More novels 
by Woolf have recently become available in Slovene, such as Jacob’s Room, Between the Acts 
(both were translated in 2013), and The Years (translated in 2014). Doris Lessing, another 
famous British feminist author, received her first Slovene translation in 1980 (Briefing for 
a Descent into Hell, originally published in 1971), followed by the 1987 translation of The 
Grass is Singing (originally published in 1950). After 1990, more works by Lessing became 
available in Slovene. The feminist manifesto by the American writer Marilyn French, 
The Women’s Room, written in 1977, was translated into Slovene only three years after its 
publication; however, this remains the only translation of this author’s work, apart from an 
essay on Shakespeare. The American poet and writer Sylvia Plath has been well represented 
in Slovene translation since 1990; however, none of her works was available in Slovene 
during the socialist period. Similarly, the American poet Adrienne Rich was first translated 
into Slovene only in 1996, while the works of the British author Angela Carter were not 
available in Slovene until 2013, when Nights at the Circus was translated. Interestingly, 
several works by the American author Erica Jong were translated into Slovene almost 
immediately after their publication: her controversial feminist novel Fear of Flying appeared 
in Slovene in 1978, followed by translations of How to Save Your Own Life in 1980, Fanny, 
Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones in 1984, Parachutes & 
Kisses in 1987, Serenissima – a Novel of Venice in 1989, and Any Woman’s Blues in 1993. 
Margaret Atwood is the Canadian writer most translated into Slovene; however, only Lady 
Oracle (translated in 1987) and The Handmaid’s Tale (translated in 1990) were available in 
Slovene during the socialist period. Several more novels by Atwood were translated in the 
first two decades of the 21st century: Surfacing in 2003 (written in 1972), and more recent 
novels, such as Oryx and Crake in 2004, The Penelopiad in 2005, The Blind Assassin in 2010, 
The Year of the Flood in 2012, and The Testaments in 2019. Alice Munro received her first 
book length translation only in 2010, more than four decades into her writing career; as 
for other salient Canadian representatives of women’s literature, such as Margaret Laurence 
and Mavis Gallant, they are still waiting for their début in Slovene.
4 The works within the collection were published in the period 1964–1977. Besides Woolf ’s novel, there were only 
seven works by other female authors included in the collection, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edith 
Wharton’s The House of Mirth, and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
46 Tjaša Mohar Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
As shown by this analysis of the data on Slovene translations obtained from COBISS, 
foreign works by women writers were underrepresented in Slovenia during the socialist 
period, particularly before 1980, and those that were translated into Slovene mostly arrived 
with a major delay. However, there are exceptions, such as Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and 
Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, which were translated into Slovene almost immediately 
after their original publication. The data (although limited to a selection of women authors) 
additionally shows that since 1990, literature by prominent women authors is better 
represented in Slovene translation, which is in line with the finding about Slovene literature 
by women authors being much better represented in the post-socialist period than before. 
These findings speak in favour of the hypothesis that one of the reasons that Munro was 
overlooked by Slovene publishers for so long was her status as a woman author writing about 
women’s issues. It is interesting, however, that some women authors (such as Erica Jong) 
received almost immediate attention from Slovene publishers, while others, like Munro, 
were side-lined. The question of the selection of authors and texts that are translated into 
Slovene will be dealt with in section 4, which will focus on the dynamics of the Slovene 
publishing industry. In the following section, I will investigate Munro’s place in the Slovene 
literary space against the background of the popularity of the short story genre in Slovenia. 
3 Munro as Exclusively a Short Story Writer
That Munro is exclusively a short-story writer has possibly contributed to her late 
introduction to Slovene readers, as has been observed by Jason Blake (2012, 182), who 
also points to the fact that short stories do not sell as well as novels do. Besides the general 
lesser popularity of short stories among readers in comparison to novels, we also need to 
consider that the short story genre has a much shorter tradition in Slovenia in comparison 
to Canada. Its early beginnings in Canada date back to the first sketches and stories written 
by Thomas McCulloch and Thomas Chandler Haliburton in the 1820s and 1830s (Weaver 
1997, 1058). As Michelle Gadpaille (1988, 3) explains, Canadian short fiction writers 
started producing short stories proper in the late 19th century and found a market for them 
in American magazines; however, they did not follow the American short story tradition 
but developed “in two other directions: the naturalistic animal story and the local-colour 
story” (Gadpaille 1988, 4). The first short story anthology appeared in Canada in 1928 
(Gadpaille 1988, 18). The author who stands out during the period of the consolidation 
of the Canadian short story is Morley Callaghan, who began to publish his stories in the 
European literary magazine This Quarter, thus marking the beginning of a period “when 
the short story became simultaneously serious and profitable” (Gadpaille 1988, 25). After 
World War II, two literary magazines that later combined into the Northern Review played 
a major role in the development of the Canadian short story (Weaver 1997, 1059). In 
the 1950s, the Canadian radio CBC became another important medium, besides literary 
magazines, “for popularizing the developing Canadian short story” (Gadpaille 1988, 34). 
Robert Weaver claims that in the 1960s, the short story became “one of the most interesting 
and varied literary genres” (1997, 1960) in Canada. This was also the period when Alice 
Munro’s first book-length publication appeared. According to Geoff Hancock (1997, 1061–
62), the short story flourished in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, also owing to creative-
writing workshops, university programmes, and literary competitions. As Nischik (2007, 1) 
47ARTICLES
points out, the number of short story anthologies published per year proves that the short 
story genre remains lively and productive in Canada. 
While short fiction has a long tradition in Slovenia as well, going back to the 19th century, 
with writers such as Janko Kersnik, Ivan Tavčar and Ivan Cankar, (Štuhec 2001, 75), the 
rise of the short story as a form happened in the 1980s (Bošnjak 2005, 204; Žbogar 2005, 
17). According to Tomo Virk (1998, 291) the intensive development of the short story 
in Slovenia in the 1980s was influenced by postmodernist short fiction and the American 
meta-fictionists. However, Virk (2004) points to the problem of the definition of the short 
story within Slovene literary theory, for there existed several names for short fiction written 
by older generations of Slovene authors. According to Alenka Žbogar (2005, 18), the term 
kratka zgodba (short story) became increasingly used in Slovene literary theory in the 1990s, 
while in the 1980s the term zgodba (story) was more often used. Žbogar (2009) also notes that 
there was a considerable increase in the production of short stories in Slovenia between 1980 
and 2000 and that they became market oriented. The increased interest in the short story 
was also accompanied by the publication of several short story anthologies after 1990. Andrej 
Koritnik (1997/1998, 167) argues that the first anthology of short stories titled Čas kratke 
zgodbe, published in 1998, represented an important milestone for Slovene literary theory, 
which previously had no clear idea of the short story form. The short story is nowadays 
widespread in Slovenia, a fact confirmed by the number of short-story contests organized, 
the one with the longest tradition being the annual contest of the Third Programme (ARS) 
of the National Radio, which has been taking place for 30 years. Short story contests are also 
organized by the literary journals Sodobnost (in the past together with the Slovene Writers’ 
Association) and AirBeletrina, among others. Many Slovene writers nowadays lend their pens 
to the short story; however, in comparison to the genre’s long tradition in Canada and its 
stage of maturity and perfection, the short story is still a young genre in Slovenia. Andrej 
Blatnik (2010, 21), the Slovene author of several short stories and a manual on how to write 
a short story (Pisanje kratke zgodbe), argues that the short story’s tendency to experiment 
with narrative techniques is one reasons that this genre is less popular with readers than the 
novel. In a small book market like Slovenia, the fact that short story collections sell less, along 
with the plethora of domestic short story writers, undoubtedly contributes to publishers 
having less interest in producing translations of short story collections. Additionally, Blatnik’s 
remark about experimenting with narrative techniques undoubtedly holds true for Munro’s 
short stories, which are characterized – particularly those written in the late period – by 
cryptic openings and narrative gaps (Gadpaille and Mohar 2014), multi-layered structures 
(Löschnigg 2014, 25), and “suggestive, deliberately fragmentary representations and open 
endings” (Nischik 2007, 206), all of which make them complex reading and therefore less 
suitable for a large readership.
4 The Slovene Translation and Publishing Industry
Jason Blake has argued that the Slovene translation industry seems chaotic in terms of the 
choice of authors and works that are translated, for this choice is often “an eclectic mix 
of personal initiative, market concerns and pure chance” (2012, 177). There seems to be 
no national strategy about which foreign authors get translated into Slovene; therefore, 
48 Tjaša Mohar Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
the choice of authors and works depends on the individual publishing house. Blake also 
observes that until recently, only “a handful of leading authors from a given country” (2012, 
187) were translated into Slovene, and claims that Munro’s work was long overshadowed by 
other, more famous Canadian authors, such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. 
A survey on the popularity of Alice Munro in Slovenia, conducted within the Canada 
Consumed project that was launched by the CEACS, has shown that Atwood is still more 
widely recognizable in Slovenia than Munro, even after the latter won the Nobel Prize (see 
Mohar and Gadpaille 2019), which seems logical – one reason for this being that Atwood 
has worked hard on building an international profile, the other that she has been available in 
Slovene translation for more than twenty years longer than Munro. 
That the Nobel Prize is no guarantee of an author’s popularity with the Slovene readership 
has previously been shown by several researchers who have dealt with the reception of Nobel 
laureates and other widely popular authors in Slovenia. Tomaž Onič (2007) and Urša Gavez 
(2016), for instance, report that the works of the Nobel Prize winning British playwright 
Harold Pinter were mostly translated into Slovene before he won the prize (which happened 
in 2005), and despite his unique and engaging style (see Onič 2016), there have been few re-
translations of his works since. Polona Ramšak (2021) finds that this might be characteristic 
particularly of contemporary Nobel Prize winners, because older generations of laureates still 
present strong competition for contemporary authors. Simon Zupan (2020), for example, 
points to Hemingway’s continuous popularity in Slovenia and to the fact that library loans of 
his works available in Slovene have increased by 20% in the last two decades. On the other 
hand, as Ramšak (2021, 109–10) notices, there are also cases when an author who has not 
won an important literary award nevertheless becomes very popular in Slovenia, such as the 
case of Karl May (see Trupej 2020), or that of Edgar Allan Poe, who, according to Zupan 
(2015, 121), was very popular in Slovenia in the period between the two wars despite his low 
popularity in the USA.
A survey conducted for my PhD thesis in 2016, within which I contacted several Slovene 
publishers, including those who published one or more translations of Munro, offers insight 
into how publishers choose foreign authors and works to be translated into Slovene. The 
survey included the following publishers: Mladinska knjiga, Celjska Mohorjeva družba, 
Beletrina, Sanje, Miš and Litera. All publishing houses included in the interviews reported 
that they followed a yearly plan in their choice of works to be published; however, the smaller 
publishing houses felt more freedom to adjust their plan to current market conditions. 
The then editor-in-chief of the leading Slovene publishing house Mladinska knjiga, Andrej 
Ilc (2016), explained that literary agents and book fairs played a key role in their choice 
of literary works to be translated; however, they also considered which works were being 
translated into other languages. The oldest Slovene publishing house, Celjska Mohorjeva 
družba (Petrovčič Jerina 2016), provided a similar answer to the question of how they chose 
foreign works to be translated; additionally, they also emphasized the importance of literary 
awards and of the need for the chosen work to be compatible with the publishing house’s 
general concept. While Mladinska knjiga found literary awards less important in their choice 
of titles to be translated, since they strived towards a balanced representation of literatures 
and genres (Ilc 2016), both publishing houses mentioned that translators sometimes played a 
49ARTICLES
critical role in the choice of literary works, as did subsidies (Ilc 2016; Petrovčič Jerina 2016). 
Beletrina’s then editor Anja Kovač (2016) explained that translations represented one half of 
all books they published per year and that literary awards as well as longlists and shortlists for 
literary awards played an important role in their choice of authors and works to be translated, 
as did subsidies, on which the publishing house depended considerably. The Sanje publishing 
house reported that it was mostly the editors who decided which books to translate; however, 
sometimes a translator’s enthusiasm for a certain work as well as literary awards played a 
decisive role (Koprivec 2016). Representatives of the Miš publishing house explained that 
they often translated authors who were not yet internationally famous, and that literary 
awards and subsidies were not a decisive factor (Miš Svoljšak 2016). The editor-in-chief of 
Litera, Orlando Uršič (2016), explained that their publishing house focused on translations 
of foreign literature written mostly by European authors – preferably living – and those 
dealing with problems affecting contemporary society, and that it was usually the translators 
and sometimes also the editor who proposed a literary work for translation.
The three publishing houses that published translations of Munro’s work were additionally 
asked to explain their decision to publish this author. Litera’s 2010 translation of Hateship, 
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage was the first book-length Slovene translation of 
Munro (by Katja Šaponjić), which was followed by Miš’s translation of Too Much Happiness 
(by Jana Ambrožič), appearing in the same year. That the first two translations were published 
in the same year is merely a coincidence, as is the fact that they appeared only a year after 
Munro won the Man Booker International Prize. In the case of Litera’s translation, it was the 
then editor Petra Vidali (2016) who selected the book because of its high quality. In the case 
of Miš’s translation, it was also the editor, Irena Miš Svoljšak, who selected the title. She was 
introduced to Munro’s works during her travels in the USA and Canada, and when contacted 
by a book agency in 2009, she opted for this title based on the book’s favourable reviews 
(Miš Svoljšak 2016). The following (and so far last) three Slovene translations of Munro were 
all published by Celjska Mohorjeva družba, whose decision to translate the collections was 
influenced by Munro’s winning the Nobel Prize in 2013, as well as my proposal as the translator, 
for I already had a longstanding cooperation with this publishing house and was working on 
my PhD thesis on Munro at the time she received the award. I also proposed the titles to be 
translated: Dear Life as the most recent collection seemed a logical choice (the translation 
appeared in 2014), while Runaway, which was translated a year later, and The View from Castle 
Rock (translated in 2017) were suggested by my PhD mentor Michelle Gadpaille. For the 
purpose of this paper, I have contacted the three publishing houses again to discover how well 
their translations of Munro’s collections have been selling and whether they would be willing 
to publish another volume by Munro. All three publishing houses, Celjska Mohorjeva družba 
(Ozvatič 2022), Miš (Miš Svoljšak 2022) and Litera (Uršič 2022) replied that they had signed 
a five-year contract for the publishing rights, and while Miš and Litera managed to sell all the 
copies of their volumes, Celjska Mohorjeva still has several copies of all three titles; among 
these, Ljubo življenje (Dear Life) has sold the most copies and Pogled z grajske pečine (The View 
from Castle Rock) the fewest. The Miš publishing house (Miš Svoljšak 2022) would not consider 
publishing another title by Munro, because they are a small publishing house and do not focus 
primarily on books for adults. Neither is Litera (Uršič 2022) considering publishing another 
volume by Munro; they have limited their publication of translations, because translations 
50 Tjaša Mohar Destiny of a Nobel Laureate in a Small Book Market: Alice Munro in Slovene Translation 
have flooded the Slovene book market, and readers are now increasingly looking for original 
works. Celjska Mohorjeva, on the other hand, is willing to consider publishing another title 
by Munro after they manage to sell all the copies of the translated collections, for they believe 
it is important that Munro’s works be available to Slovene readers (Ozvatič 2022). Like Litera, 
Celjska Mohorjeva (Ozvatič 2022) also claims that sales of translations of literary works are 
declining, because people prefer to borrow books from libraries than buy them. If a publisher 
is unable to sell all the copies within the five-year contract, the contract needs to be renewed 
and additional payments made to be able to continue selling the book (Ozvatič 2022). This 
explains the low print run of Munro’s books – all translations of Munro’s works were printed 
in 500 copies each, which seems to be sufficient for the book market in a nation of two million 
like Slovenia. However, the low print run consequently makes the books more expensive and 
thus less accessible to readers. 
The deterioration in the situation on the Slovene book market concerning translations of 
literary works, as has been observed by Celjska Mohorjeva and Litera, partly explains the lack 
of interest in publishing additional Munro collections in Slovene. The COVID-19 pandemic 
has further worsened the already fragile situation on the Slovene book market, as Blaž Mazi 
(2020) observes in the article titled “Knjige so poražene. Zmagale so uteži za domači fitnes” 
(English: “Books are defeated. Weights for home fitness have won”), referring to Miha 
Kovač’s statement that during the first wave of the pandemic, sales of books decreased by 
90%, which caused a collapse in the Slovene publishing business. The closure of bookshops 
during the pandemic, and the absence of live book fairs and book launches have negatively 
impacted Slovene publishers, for, as Ozvatič (2022) explains, books sell the most at book 
launches, particularly original literary works which are promoted by the authors themselves. 
Mazi (2020) also points to the fact that the current crisis in the Slovene publishing business 
is connected to a reading crisis that predated the pandemic: according to a recent survey, the 
number of non-readers in Slovenia has lately increased to reach a similar level to that of forty 
years ago. The current situation in Slovenia is not an isolated case; similar trends have been 
observed in other countries. However, small book markets like Slovenia are undoubtedly 
more vulnerable in case of events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The prospects of getting 
more Slovene translations of Munro are thus not promising at the moment, since, as we 
have seen, the decision to publish an author is not entirely in the hands of the publishing 
houses, for they are dependent on the situation of the book market, over which they have 
little control.
5 Conclusion
There is no single reason why Munro was not introduced to Slovene readers earlier and 
why there is but little interest for her works among Slovene publishers, even now that she 
is a Nobel Prize winning author. The fact that she is exclusively a short-story writer partly 
accounts for this, since the short story genre has a short tradition in Slovenia compared to 
Canada, and since short stories are generally less popular with readers than novels. Munro’s 
writing about women’s lives as seen from the feminine – occasionally also feminist  – 
perspective is another reason for her late arrival in Slovenia: a large percentage of current 
Slovene (female) readers grew up under the socialist regime, which propagated gender 
51ARTICLES
equality; thus, they could not easily identify with the restricted social roles of Munro’s 
heroines from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It is therefore unsurprising that the five Munro 
collections available in Slovene are from the author’s later period, in which she moved 
away from the early female/feminist themes towards more contemporary settings and more 
universal human issues. As is often the case with foreign authors translated into Slovene, 
the first two Slovene translations of Munro were the result of an editor’s personal initiative. 
Munro’s winning the Nobel Prize resulted in an additional three Slovene translations of 
her works. With five translated volumes out of fourteen, Munro has embraced the destiny 
of other (contemporary) Nobel laureates in Slovenia, who are represented in the Slovene 
language only by a boutique selection of their works. 
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