Belarusian Author Wins Nobel Prize For Literature

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, known for her nonfiction work on the consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. “Together they record verbally the history of the country, their common history, while each person puts into words the story of his/her own life”.

“Her message is very much at odds with a lot of what Putin stands for”, said Andrew Kaufman of the University of Virginia, author of “Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times”.

Speaking to Swedish broadcaster SVT, Alexievich said winning the award left her with “complicated” emotions.

This truth, or set of truths – “what people thought, understood and remembered during the event”. Wik said it would be “excellent news” for the publication if she won. “I do not love Beria, Stalin, Putin… how low they let Russian Federation sink”, she said, referring to the former Soviet leader and his head of the secret police.

“I’ve been searching for a literary method that would allow the closest possible approximation to real life”, she said in an earlier interview, as reported by the Guardian, adding “Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, it tortured and hypnotized me, I wanted to capture it on paper”. “They don’t print my books here”.

“The message of her works – it’s really a message of humanity and a celebration of those forgotten in history…it’s a powerful message that transcends politics”, he said. “I hope your award will serve our state and the Belarusian people”.

The trend for Nobel prizes in Literature has been tipped over the past decade towards European writers not widely read in English, including the French novelist J.

Alexievich’s books include “The Chernobyl Prayer”, “The War’s Unwomanly Face”, “Last Witness”, and “Zinky Boys”.

She was born in 1948 in the Ukrainian town of Stanislav – now the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, in the country’s central-eastern region – to a Ukrainian mother and Belarusian father. Her technique was inspired by the Russian oral storytelling tradition, The New York Times noted.

After the award was given out, Danius praised Alexievich as an “extraordinary writer” who has actually devised a new kind of literary genre. “I usually spend three to four years writing a book, but this time it took me more than ten years”. Nearly one million Soviet women participated in the war, and it’s a largely unknown history. The work was not published until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Alexievich is the sixth victor who writes in Russian.

Almost 50 years later, a few still agree.

The average age of winners has been 64.

Literature was the fourth of this year’s Nobel prizes.

Rudyard Kipling, who wrote “The Jungle Book” (no, the novel, not the Disney movie), was the youngest recipient.