Svetlana Alexievich Wins Nobel Literature Prize

Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in contemporary time. 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. But her books, controversially written in Russian, are not published in her home country amid what the author has described as “a creeping censorship”.

According to Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Alexeivich is an “extraordinary” writer.

“It immediately evokes such great names as (Ivan) Bunin, (Boris) Pasternak”, she said, referring to Russian writers who have won the prize. “On the one hand, it’s such a fantastic feeling”.

She said she is going to use the prize money, 8m Swedish krona (€860,000) to buy her freedom to write.

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. When her father had completed his military service, the family moved to Belarus, where both parents worked as teachers.

“A new national leader has appeared in Belarus, She has more authority now than any politician – the president or a minister”.

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.

A photo taken on 11 October, 2013 shows Belarusian journalist and writer Svetlana Alexievich posing during her visit at the 65th Book Fair in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. “Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire”, she said in a biographical text published on her website.

Svetlana Alexievich spoke of her personal joy when she talked to the press. Yet she has also chronicled major events in world history: the accident at Chernobyl, the Soviet engagement in Afghanistan, and World War II as remembered by female veterans. “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.

The Nobel awards week continues today with the other most closely watched Nobel award, the Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize is presented to the recipient(s) at an annual ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, which marks the anniversary of Swedish Chemist Alfred Nobel’s death.