On her website the author writes that she is a journalist and a historian She blends journalism and literature in her writings.
Advertisement
History showed there was no place for compromise when faced with oppression, Alexievich added. “She tells universal human stories that anyone from any culture can relate to”. Her style can be described by an investigative, journalistic way to deal with writing that frequently utilizes strategies from oral history. Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich is seen during a book fair in Minsk, Belarus.
“Everyone is quite excited”, he said. The fall-out affected Belarus more than any other country. “I love the Belarusian people”, she said.
Alexievich will receive her award at the Nobel ceremony on December 10; several of her books, including Voices From Chernobyl, are available online.
Earlier this week, the 2015 Nobel medicine prize went to three scientists from Japan, the United States and China who discovered drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases.
But after the prize was announced on Thursday she obliquely criticised Belarus’s hardline leader Alexander Lukashenko and denounced Russian forces for their involvement in the separatist conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.
Ms Alexievich has written about the collapse of the Soviet Union, World War Two, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Alexievich, 67, is the 14th woman to win the literature prize and a rarity in that her work is mainly nonfiction. He was 42 years old when he was awarded the prize in 1907.
In a telephone conversation, Alexievich said the award left her with a “complicated” feeling.
She praised Alexievich as a great and innovative writer.
She said she was at home “doing the ironing” when the academy called. “I take a very long time to write my books – from five to ten years”, she told Swedish television separately after the prize announcement. The greater part of my path has been traveled, but much work remains ahead of me, and many new turns. The book is the first in the Utopia series that depicted life in the Soviet Union “from the perspective of the individual”, the academy said. It was about one million Soviet women in the red army who participated in the Second World War alongside male soldiers.
Her 1993 book “Enchanted with Death” focused on attempted suicides resulting from the downfall of communism, as people who felt inseparable from socialist ideals were unable to accept a new world order.
“It’s a true achievement not only in material but also in form”, she said.
Alexievich worked as a teacher and a journalist after finishing school, later living overseas for many years in Sweden, Germany and France.
Advertisement
Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, a critic of totalitarian rule who has brought history to life through the voices of ordinary people, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.
