The Nobel Prize 2015 in Literature went to 67-year-old Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich. She is the first writer from Belarus to receive the award.
The prize was awarded “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
Ms. Alexievich is the 14th women Literature Laureate.
Ms. Alexievich used the skills of a journalist to create literature. In her literary works she chronicled the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse. She handled the subjects like World War II, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the suicides that ensued from the death of Communism.
About Svetlana Alexievich
- Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer, writing in Russian.
- Svetlana was born on 31 May 1948, in the west Ukrainian town of Stanislaviv to a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother and grew up in Belarus.
Career in Journalism
- After finishing school Svetlana worked as a reporter in several local newspapers before graduating from Belarusian State University (1972) and becoming a correspondent for the literary magazine Neman in Minsk (1976).
- She went on to a career in journalism and writing narratives from interviews with witnesses to the most dramatic events in the country, such as World War II, the Soviet-Afghan war, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster.
Life in Exile and Returning Back to Minsk
- After persecution by the Lukashenko regime, she left Belarus in 2000.
- The International Cities of Refuge Network offered her sanctuary and during the following decade she lived in Paris, Gothenburg and Berlin.
- In 2011, Alexievich moved back to Minsk.
