Ottawa:
Canadian author Alice Munro said she was "just terribly surprised" - and delighted - to learn early today that she had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," Munro told The Canadian Press in Victoria, calling the award "quite wonderful", according to the Toronto Star newspaper.
The writer told the CBC that she had been awakened by her daughter with the news that Sweden's Nobel Committee had given her its literature prize.
She said she always viewed her chances of winning the Nobel as "one of those pipe dreams" that "might happen, but it probably wouldn't".
"It's the middle of the night here and I had forgotten about it all, of course," she told the Canadian broadcaster.