Belarusian writer wins Nobel literature prize

Many people’s reaction to her award, therefore, was politically charged, noting her vocal disapproval for Vladimir Putin’s involvement in Syria and Ukraine, for example.

“I am happy for her because she is a citizen of Belarus”, the official Belta news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying during a tour of a nuclear power plant.

Alexievich was living in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, at the time of the Chernobyl disaster. She said she was not aware of any hostility to Alexievich, however.

“She said one word: “Fantastic”, Danius said.

“They don’t print my books here”. “Belarusian television never invites me”, she said. “They will have to listen to me”, she said.

Alexievich’s first novel, “The Unwomanly Face of the War” describes the experiences of women who fought against Nazi Germany in the Red Army, based on “hundreds of deep interviews with participants in the Second World War”, Danius said. Harry Potter series author JK Rowling, with over 5.6 million Twitter followers, has actively addressed readers through public appearances and social media, revealing much more than we could have imagined when we closed the dust jacket on the final Harry Potter book. From her very first works she goes deep inside human beings, spelling out uncomfortable and controversial truths.

(Vatican Radio) Free speech advocates have welcomed the decision to award this year’s Nobel Prize in literature to Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich as the writer and investigative journalist is seen as a voice of the voiceless.

“I do only one thing: I buy freedom for myself”.

“These people were already old”, she told RFE/RL earlier this year about the women she interviewed for her book.

The 67-year-old was born in 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, to a Ukrainian mother and Belarusian father.

Kaufman added that the fact that it is hard to categorize Alexievich’s work is part of what makes it great.

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 – scooped France’s prestigious Prix Medicis essai in 2013. She worked at newspapers near the Polish border and in Minsk while collecting material for her books. Her books carry the essence of literary chronicle of the emotional aspect of the Soviet and post-Soviet individuals. You can read an excerpt that was published in the Paris Review here. “She’s an oral historian”, said novelist and editor Keith Gessen, who translated “Voices of Chernobyl” into English, comparing her to Studs Terkel, “but a bit less dry”.