Nobel Prize in Literature Awarded to Svetlana Alexievich

Belarusian author has been praised for her interview-based documentary works

 

                

 Belarusian author and journalist Svetlana Alexievich, a longtime critic of the Soviet regime and more recently of the Russian government, won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature.
Ms. Alexievich “has offered us new historical material and she has offered us a new genre,” Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Thursday at the announcement of the award.
The 67-year-old Nobel laureate, whose books have documented life in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet era, has been a prominent voice against Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, denouncing Russia’s annexation last year of Crimea as a criminal act and criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin as an imperialist.

Two books by Nobel winner Svetlana Alexievich, “Zinky Boys” and “Voices from Chernobyl,” are available in English. A third, “War’s Unwomanly Face,” appears to be out of print. After the Nobel announcement Thursday, her U.S. publishers said they were rushing out new print runs of “Zinky Boys” and “Voices from Chernobyl,” as well as an e-book edition of “Voices from Chernobyl.”

In a 2014 interview with Radio Liberty, she described Russia’s new nationalism, saying: “It’s not just Putin. It’s the Putin who is in every Russian.”
Ms. Alexievich also has been an outspoken critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the former collective-farm director who has run the country for more than two decades. Under Mr. Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule, Belarus has remained poor isolated and impoverished, and the president’s political opponents have been routinely arrested and jailed.
The selection of a journalist was an unusual move for the Swedish Academy. In recent decades, the world’s most prestigious literature prize seldom has been awarded to writers of nonfiction. (Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill are among the nonfiction laureates, winning in 1950 and 1953, respectively.)

Ms. Alexievich, the 14th woman to win the Nobel in literature, said she was at home, ironing clothes, when she received the phone call from the Swedish academy.
“It’s an incredibly complex sentiment,” she told Swedish television SVT. “On the one side, it’s such a fantastic feeling but it’s also disturbing.”
At a news conference Thursday in Minsk at the cramped offices of the independent newspaper Nasha Niva, Ms. Alexievich said “It’s not just an award for me, but for our culture, our small country.” Mr. Lukashenko’s office released a statement congratulating the writer. “Your writing touched the feelings not only of Belarusians, but of readers in many countries,” the message read.
Ms. Alexievich’s books weave together the voices of hundreds of interview subjects in exploring the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, and the experience of Soviet women who were on the front lines during World War II. They are part of an expansive project called “Voices of Utopia.”

Two of her books are available in English: “Voices from Chernobyl” and “Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War.” Her first book, “War’s Unwomanly Face,” appears to be out of print. After the Nobel announcement Thursday, her U.S. publishers said they were rushing out new print runs of “Voices from Chernobyl” and “Zinky Boys” as well as an e-book of “Voices from Chernobyl.” In the U.S., Ms. Alexievich has been published by Picador, Dalkey Archive Press and W.W. Norton. Picador, for example, is ordering up 20,000 copies of its paperback edition of “Voices from Chernobyl,” and plans additional print runs in coming weeks.
For “War’s Unwomanly Face,” published in 1985, Ms. Alexievich interviewed hundreds of women who participated in World War II. The fact that a million Soviet women had served at the front lines was a largely unknown chapter in history, Ms. Danius said. The book was hugely popular in the Soviet Union, selling two million copies, she added.