Alexievich, chronicler of Soviet life, wins Literature Nobel

67-year-old Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich is the victor of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, and the 14th woman to win the award since its inauguration in 1901.

“She transcends journalistic formats and has pressed ahead with a genre that others have helped create”, Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said in conjunction with the October 8 announcement. “In 2015, Svetlana Alexievich also met with her readers and held a presentation of her books as part of the fair”, the ministry said. In the conference, the writer said she has been ignored by the authorities due to her criticism of strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko: “They pretend I don’t exist, I am not published and I can not speak publicly anywhere”.

‘She has invented a new literary genre.

Alexievich’s “fundamental project is to uncover the Russian soul”, Jacques Testard, publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions, which will release Second Hand Time, an oral history about nostalgia for the Soviet Union in the United Kingdom in May 2016.

“It immediately evokes such great names as (Ivan) Bunin, (Boris) Pasternak”, she said, referring to Russian writers who have won the prize. “But I don’t love the world of Stalin, Beria, Putin, and Shoigu”, she added, naming the notorious architect of the Soviet Union’s labor camps and Russia’s current defense minister.

She said eight million Swedish krona (£775,000) prize would “buy her freedom”.

The Belarusian has been critical of her home country’s government in her writings and spent 10 years in exile living in various European countries before moving back to Minsk.

“I have two new ideas for two new books, so I am glad that I will be free now to work on them”.

Books of Belarussian author and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Svetlana Alexievich in a bookstore in Berlin, Germany.

The investigative creator’s first novel, “The Unwomanly Face of War, ” was distributed in 1985 and depends on the genuine stories of ladies who battled against the Nazis amid World War II”. “Journalists of Russian media should be tried”, she was quoted as saying earlier this year.

The Swedish Academy insists its selections are based on literary merit alone.

In 1997, Alexievich published “Voices from Chornobyl: Chronicle of the Future”. But its decisions have often sparked political reactions, particularly during the Cold War. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is also awarded by the committee, although it is not one of the original prizes set up by Alfred Nobel.

Last year’s literature award went to French writer Patrick Modiano.