Investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.
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Alexievich, born in 1948 in Ukraine, worked as a teacher and a journalist after finishing school.
The Nobel academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, praised Alexievich as a great and innovative writer who has “mapped the soul” of the Soviet and post-Soviet people. Fittingly, Alexievich prefers to leave the stories to her many interviewees, letting eyewitness accounts shed an unsettling light on tragedies like World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War and the disaster at Chernobyl – an investigation that has been read aloud in excerpts on All Things Considered.
Alexievich, only the 14th woman to win the prize since it was first awarded in 1901, had been the top choice among literary observers and among the bookies’ favourites.
She was at home “doing the ironing” when the academy called.
Alexievich spent several years living outside Belarus after criticizing the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is up for re-election on Sunday. “On the one hand, it’s such a fantastic feeling, but it’s also a bit disturbing”.
Her most recent book “Second-Hand Time” – a non-fiction work examining the legacy of the Soviet mentality over 20 years after the collapse of Communism – was awarded France’s prestigious Prix Medicis essai in 2013. Her first book “War’s Unwomanly Face” was based on interviews with hundreds of women who had participated in the second world war.
“I have two ideas for new books so I’m pleased that I will now have the freedom to work on them”.
“By means of her extraordinary method – a carefully composed collage of human voices – Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era.”
In 1997, Alexievich published “Voices from Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future”. Alexievich later studied journalism in Belarus, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union.
Other 2015 Nobel Prize winners include Arthur B. McDonald, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday, while Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald shared this year’s Nobel in Physics.
The academy has also honored writers who were viewed favorably by Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965.
The announcements of the science awards are over and now the Nobel Prize spotlight turns to literature.
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The laureates will receive their prizes at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of prize creator Alfred Nobel, a Swedish philanthropist and scientist.
