The 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Alice Munro, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.

Canada's Munro, 82, won the prize for her short stories, which focus on the frailties of the human condition.

"Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov," the Academy said in statement on its website.

"Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning," the Academy said.

Her works include, "Who Do You Think You Are?" (1978), "The Moons of Jupiter" (1982),

"Runaway" (2004), "The View from Castle Rock" (2006) and "Too Much Happiness" (2009).

Her most recent collection is "Dear Life" (2012).

Literature was the fourth of this year's Nobel prizes. The Nobel season will end on October 14 with the presentation of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a prize not originally established by the will of the award's founder, Alfred Nobel. This prize was introduced in 1968 by the Swedish central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, in memory of Nobel, an industrialist who invented dynamite.

All the prizes are traditionally presented to the winners in a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). Laureates receive a diploma, medal and around eight million Swedish kronor (920,000 euros, $1.25 million).

The Nobel Prizes were established in Nobel's will in 1895 and are widely seen as his attempt to be remembered by posterity for something more than an invention that has caused so much destruction. The prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901.

Nobel highlight

The season culminates in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Price on Friday, October 11, in Oslo, Norway. A record 259 nominations have been submitted for this year's prize.

Among the people widely mentioned as possible laureates is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head last year by the Taliban for championing education for girls.

Last year's winner was not a person, but an entity: the European Union, which received the prize in recognition of its achievements in bringing about reconciliation and integration in Europe.

hc/tj (Reuters, AFP, AP)