She becomes the 14th woman to win the prize since it was first awarded in 1901.
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The Academy is chaired by the so-called Permanent Secretary, Sara Danius, a literature and aesthetics scholar who was appointed this summer.
Alexievich said the prize would enable her to devote herself to two new writing projects.
She inhabited Paris, Gothenburg and Berlin ever since 2000 after they was also tortured by Lukashenko routine of Belarus.
She has called his 2011 reelection “a humanitarian catastrophe for the entire Belarusian society. And this is the theme of my books, this is my path, my circles of hell, from man to man”. “I am not published (in Belarus) and I can not speak publicly anywhere”.
“It’s not an award for me but for our culture, for our small country, which has been caught in a grinder throughout history”, she told a press conference in Minsk. Alexievich is the author of, among other books, “Voices from Chernobyl”, about the survivors of the nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986.
“My calling as a writer involves me in talking to many people and examining many documents. I am thinking now about great Russian writers such as Pasternak”. “Belarus’s government pretends I don’t exist”, she said.
Her books have been published in 19 countries. Alexievich is also the author of three plays and over twenty documentary screenplays.
When Alexievich got the call that she had won the Nobel Prize, she reportedly exclaimed, “Fantastic!” Asked what she was going to do with the the prize money, she said it would “buy freedom”.
Alexievich said she did not plan to vote, but offered a qualified endorsement of Tatiana Karatkevich, the nearest thing to an opposition candidate.
The award is worth 8m kronor (691,000 pounds).
Can I read her books in English?
Alexievich’s “fundamental project is to uncover the Russian soul”, Jacques Testard, publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions, which will release Second Hand Time, an oral history about nostalgia for the Soviet Union in the United Kingdom in May 2016.
Alexievich worked as a teacher and a journalist after finishing school.
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. At the same time she’s offering us a history of emotions. The Swedish Academy says it makes its choices only on literary merit and doesn’t consider politics. But its decisions have often sparked political reactions, particularly during the Cold War.
The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, who specified in his will awards for achievements in science, literature, and peace.
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Prizes like the Nobel inspire much ado-in the weeks leading up to the announcement, people give their best guesses as to who will win, look back on past “snubbed” winners, and even place bets as if spectators at a Derby.
