Nobel Literature Prize Goes to Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus

Shelf Awareness

Svetlana Alexievich

The 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus for her "polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

An author and journalist, Alexievich has specialized in writing narratives based on interviews with participants in World War II, Chernobyl, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Persecuted by the Belarus government, Alexievich left the country for a decade, but returned in 2011.

Her titles translated into English and released in the U.S. are Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, translated by Keith Gessen, published by the Dalkey Archive Press in 2005 and Picador in 2006, and Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, translated by Robin Whitby, published by Norton in 1992.

Her other books include War's Unwomanly Face, a novel about women's experiences in World War II; The Last Witnesses: The Book of Unchildlike Stories, memories of children during wartime; and Enchanted with Death, about suicides and attempted suicides by Soviet citizens unnerved by the fall of the Soviet Union.

Among her many honors, Alexievich has won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Voices from Chernobyl; the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade; Swedish PEN's Tucholsky Prize; and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Prize.

And report in TheTelegraph

And at The Guardian