Belarusian Writer Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
October 8, 2015
Svetlana Alexievich, a journalist and novelist from Belarus, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature. Alexievich’s writings blend literature and nonfiction. She is best known for writing about men and women who lived through World War II (1939-1945), Russia’s occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Alexievich is only the 14th woman out of the 108 authors who have won the literature prize. She is also one of the few winners whose major works are nonfiction.
In an interview, Alexievich said her technique of blending journalism and literature was inspired by the Russian tradition of oral storytelling: “I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me. Each person offers a text of his or her own.” The Swedish Academy, which made the Nobel Prize award, praised Alexievich “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” An academy representative said, “She’s devised a new kind of literary genre. It’s a true achievement not only in material but in form.” Alexievich claimed her single greatest influence was the Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich, who developed a form of novel he sometimes called “people talking about themselves” or a “collective novel.”
Alexievich gained recognition with her first novel, The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), based on interviews with hundreds of women who had fought against the Nazis during World War II. It is the first book in a projected trilogy called “Voices of Utopia” that portrays life in the former Soviet Union from the viewpoint of ordinary citizens. She is also known for the oral history Voices from Chernobyl (1999), the product of more than 500 interviews collected over 10 years. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War (1992) is a grim account of Russia’s military conflict in Afghanistan, written from the viewpoint of the common Russian soldier. It is one of several works critical of the Russian government. Alexievich has also criticized Belarus, a former Soviet republic. Her criticism has forced her to periodically live abroad.
Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948, in the town of Ivano-Frankovsk in Ukraine. She grew up in what is now Belarus, living with her family in a village where both parents were schoolteachers. Alexievich studied journalism in school and after graduation she joined a newspaper in Brest as a reporter.