As a journalist she wrote about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, recording the experiences of ordinary soldiers engaged in the proxy war in the already troubled Brezhnev phase of the USSR’s collapse. The academy itself said Alexievich was chosen “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
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“She said one word: ‘Fantastic!'” Danius said.
Like many intellectuals in Belarus, Alexievich supports the political opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is up for re-election on Sunday.
She lived in Paris, Gothenburg and Berlin since 2000 after she was persecuted by Lukashenko regime of Belarus.
“It’d be interesting to see what he’s going to do in the situation”, she said, speaking on the landing outside her apartment in a Soviet-era block. I can’t speak anywhere publicly.
In explaining why she wrote about the terrors and horrors of the past, she responded, “If we don’t understand what was wrong with us, we’ll never rid ourselves of our past”.
Alexievich’s views and independence have made her unpopular with authorities in Belarus, as well, where she belongs to the opposition, her website says. I love the Russian people. Her books were no longer published in the country and were removed from the school curriculum. It sold more than 2 million copies. “They will have to listen to me”, she said.
Alexievich’s first book, “I’ve Left My Village”, gave her a reputation as a dissident.
In an interview following the announcement, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, elaborated on the decision.
Latest news from the awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature. “But it’s also a bit disturbing”. “I have two ideas for new books, so I’m pleased that I will now have the freedom to work on them”.
Born in May 1948 in Ukraine, Alexievich studied journalism at the University of Minsk in Belarus from 1967 to 1972 and worked as a teacher and journalist. Her books, which have spanned three decades and appeared in Russian and in translation into English and other languages, include War’s Unwomanly Face, Zinky Boys, and Voices from Chernobyl.
In 1997, Alexievich published “Voices from Chornobyl: Chronicle of the Future”.
Her writing has involved the collection, “collage”, and communication of human stories from some of the most painful and dramatic events of her region’s history: the Second World War, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and Russia’s ill-fated war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989, to name a few.
She is the 14th woman to win Nobel’s literature honor and was preceded by Alice Munro who was given the award in 2013.
On Wednesday, Sweden’s Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the United States and American-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research on DNA fix. It is also based on extensive interviewing.
The economics prize will wrap up this year’s Nobel season on October 12. The awards in medicine, physics and chemistry were announced earlier this week.
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All awards will be handed out on December. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
