Svetlana Alexievich was named the 2015 Nobel Laureate in literature on Thursday, earning a new level of global fame and exposure for her work.
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For that work, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people touched by the massive 1986 nuclear meltdown, which spread radioactivity on the wind across much of Eastern Europe.
Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the chair of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, called her writing “a monument to courage and suffering in our time”, according toBBC News.
Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948, in the western Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk to a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother.
As she writes on her website, “I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves”.
Alexievich has seen her works translated into numerous languages and has scooped several worldwide awards.
She adds that the works “amount to a vast literary chronicle of the emotional life, the inner life of the Soviet individual, as well as the post-Soviet individual”.
She said another way should be explored to prevent the world from becoming like what she saw after the Chernobyl disaster. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel will be awarded on October. 12.
The 67-year-old from Belarus’ first novel, The Unwomanly Face of the War or U vojny ne ženskoe lico, was published 30 years ago and told the true stories of women who had fought against the Nazis.
Alexievich dedicated the prize to her native Belarus. She then worked as both a teacher and journalist, eventually taking the position of correspondent for a literary magazine.
Alexievich suffered persecution in Belarus during the Alexander Lukashenko years: Her books were censored, her phoned was bugged, and she was banned from doing public appearances. “It takes me a long time to write my books, from five to 10 years”, she said. It was finally published in 1985 under the perestroika reforms.
“It immediately evokes such great names as [Ivan] Bunin, [Boris] Pasternak”, Alexievich said, speaking of the prize.
She has also weighed into the debate over the crisis in Ukraine by praising protesters who ousted Kremlin-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 for trying to shatter the links with the country’s Soviet history.
The group’s deputy director, Catherine Taylor, said she hoped the Nobel Prize “will further highlight the civil and political injustices in Belarus and go a few way to bringing about the restitution of free speech and freedom of expression for all Belarusians”.
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This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday.
