Danza de las sombras (Premio Nobel de Literatura)

ALICE MUNRO UNPUBLISHED

The acclaimed first book of short stories by the Nobel laureate, winner of the Governor General's Award

BOOK OF THE YEAR IN EL CULTURAL

The magic of Alice Munro, invoked by so many writers and literary critics, with which she has illuminated the most everyday lives, feelings, and dialogues, and which has made her the best short story writer in contemporary literature, winner of the Nobel and the Booker, was already fully established in her first of fourteen short story collections: Dance of the Happy Shades.

Fifteen stories #some with a strong autobiographical character# that reveal the multiple nuances of human nature: a young woman discovers how much she doesn't know about her father when she accompanies him on his delivery route as a Walker Brothers salesman; a married woman returns home after her mother's death and tries to compensate her sister for the time she spent caring for her; the audience at a children's piano recital receives a surprising lesson when a "singular" student conveys unexpected emotion while playing a piece.

A key book in Munro's work, unpublished until today in Spanish, which won the Governor General's Award and consecrated her as the great narrator she was destined to be.

Critics have said:
«The hallmarks of her writing are already apparent: her fondness for domestic lives shaken by the unexpected, her ability to create complex characters, the care she puts into details, and those endings that, even if unpredictable, always seem plausible. One of the best contemporary short story writers.»
Carolina Alba, La Estación Azul (RTVE)

«The fifteen stories that make up the volume, unpublished until now in Spanish, evoke those of Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio or John Steinbeck in The Pastures of Heaven, in which the apparent pleasant life of their characters hides an infinitely more bitter reality.»
José Antonio Gurpegui, El Cultural

«Alice Munro's first book of short stories shows that she already had a brilliant concept that allowed her to transform and illuminate stories about the daily lives of her characters. Her wit was vital.»
Javier García Recio, La Opinión de Málaga

«Her magnificent narrative techniques with their darkness and endings, those stories where even breathing is suspended waiting for the next sentence, or the characters who are ordinary on the surface but hide unexpected torrents within... pure Munro. A gift.»
Elena Méndez, La Voz de Galicia

«In this early Dance of the Happy Shades, the future Nobel Prize winner already showed her psychological studies, the narrative discontinuity, and the description of urbanizations with Chekhovian delicacy.»
Gonzalo Torné, El Mundo (La Lectura)

«A wonderful book with beautiful, magical stories.»
Núria Espert

«A master of the short story, Munro. Unrepeatable and extraordinary.»
Miguel Rojo, El Comercio

«How does Alice Munro do it? What she achieves seems like magic.»
Sara Mesa, El País

«Splendid creator of characters and magnificent describer of environments, especially rural ones. [...] Her exceptional mastery dates back to her literary beginnings.»
Carlos Bravo Suárez, Diario del Alto Aragón

«Munro has an exceptional talent for narrating not very intense situations and feelings, which extend over time and are also de-dramatized by retrospective narration, but they move and captivate.»
Patricio Pron, Babelia