Canadian Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature for being the "master of the contemporary short story," the award-giving body said on Thursday (October 10).

The award was announced by The Swedish Academy but organisers were unable to contact her, so had to inform her of the win over voicemail.

Munro was awarded a prize of 8 million crowns (£772,000).

The literature prize is the fourth of this year's crop of prizes, which were established in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and awarded for the first time in 1901.

The award is only presented to living writers. Last year's winner was Chinese author Mo Yan and previous recipients include Ernest Hemmingway and Rudyard Kipling.

Munro began writing in her teens and published her first book in 1968, the collection Dance of the Happy Shades.

Presented by Adam Justice

Read more: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nobel-prize-literature-alice-munro-winner-canada-512882