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.
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“In our time, it is hard to be an honest person”, she said.
Alexievich worked as a teacher and a journalist after finishing school. Her style can be described by an investigative, journalistic way to deal with writing that frequently utilizes strategies from oral history.
She said another way should be explored to prevent the world from becoming like what she saw after the Chernobyl disaster.
“Her goal is to communicate the history of human feeling”.
Svetlana Alexievich: “What do I think?” “She’s quite direct and harsh in her character, not everyone likes her”. The writer said she did not hate the Russian nation.
He added: “There are not that many things that come to your mind when you say Belarus”.
The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature, and peace in accordance with his will.
“It’d be interesting to see what he’s going to do in this situation”, she said, speaking on the landing outside her apartment in a Soviet-era block. In a televised interview immediately afterward, Danius called Alexievich “an extraordinary writer….” Of the 108 writers to win the Nobel Prize for literature, she is the 14th woman. “Others have been there too but she expanded it”, Danius said.
Danius told Swedish broad-caster SVT that she had contacted Alexievich just before the announcement was made. “But it’s also a bit disturbing”. “They will have to listen to me”, she said. “I regularly waste 3 to 4 existence creating a publication, yet this valuable time required me greater than 10 years”. “I have two new ideas for two new books, so I am glad that I will be free now to work on them”.
She began tape-recording accounts of female soldiers who took part in World War II while she was working as a local newspaper reporter in the 1970s. Author and former presidential candidate Vladimir Neklajev remarked that, for years, she has been a notable figure on the country’s literature scene.
“For the past 30 or 40 years, she’s been busy mapping the post-Soviet individual”. She is best known for giving voice to women and men who lived through major events like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that lasted from 1979 to 1989 and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, in which her own sister was killed and her mother was blinded.
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Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich holds flowers as she arrives to attend a news conference in Minsk, Belarus, October 8, 2015.
