Lit Nobel goes to Chernobyl, WWII chronicler
Belarus journalist’s work includes accounts of WWII, Chernobyl and Russian war in Afghanistan
Stockholm, Oct. 8: Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich has won the Nobel Literature Prize. Honoured “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”, Ms Alexievich has drawn international acclaim with her emotional accounts of the Chernobyl disaster and World War II.
Stockholm: Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich has won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her portrayal of life in the former Soviet Union which the Swedish Academy said was “a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
Alexievich’s work includes chronicles of the lives of Soviet women during the Second World War as well as of the consequences of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and the Russian war in Afghanistan told from the perspective of ordinary citizens.
She collected hundreds of interviews of people impacted by these tumultuous events, putting them together in works that the academy said were like a “musical composition.”
“By means of her extraordinary method, a carefully composed collage of human voices, Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era,” the academy said on Thursday in awarding the 8 million crown ($ 972,000) prize. Alexievich said the prize would enable her to devote herself to two new writing projects. “For money I can buy one thing, I buy freedom. I take a very long time to write my books, from five to ten years,” she told Swedish television after the prize announcement. “I have two new ideas for two new books, so I am glad that I will be free now to work on them.”
She said she was dedicating her Nobel Prize in Literature to her homeland, where her books cannot be published, blasting strongman rule there and in neighbouring Russia.
Apparently caught by surprise by the news in her tiny Minsk flat, Alexievich hastily called a press conference at the offices of a local newspaper. “It’s a great personal joy,” she said, saying she was humbled to have joined the ranks of Russian Nobel- winning greats Ivan Bunin and Boris Pasternak. “It’s not an award for me but for our culture, for our small country, which has been caught in a grinder throughout history,” she said. Alexievich, who writes in Russian and has railed against the soul- sapping Soviet system in her books, slammed authorianism in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
“I love the Russian world, but the kind, humane Russian world,” she said. “I do not love Beria, Stalin, Putin... How low they let Russia sink,” she said, referring to the former Soviet leader and his head of the secret police. Alexievich said she has been ignored by her country’s
Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich said she was dedicating her Nobel Prize in Literature to her homeland, where her books cannot be published, blasting strongman rule there and in neighbouring Russia
authorities under strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko, whom she has criticised strongly. “They pretend I don’t exist,” she said. “I am not published ( in Belarus) and I cannot speak publicly anywhere. Alexievich said she has been turned off by Moscow’s aggressive, militaristic rhetoric and policies, including its meddling in Ukraine and the idea that “everything can be solved from the position of force.” Speaking in a crowded room after being presented with flowers amid cries of “Hurrah!”, she said she was sad that most of the people she wrote about in her books chronicling the Chernobyl disaster and World War II died before she won the award. Alexievich, born in 1948 in Ukraine, worked as a teacher and a journalist after finishing school. She lived in exile abroad for many years, including in Sweden, Germany and France, due to her criticism of the Belarus government.
“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. “But I don’t just record a dry history of events and facts, I’m writing a history of human feelings.” Her books include Voices from Chernobyl, Chronicle of the Future, and Zinky Boys — Soviet voices from a forgotten war, a portrayal of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan.
Alexievich’s documentary style of writing first became popular in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s. But she has long been an uncomfortable writer for the authorities due to her humanistic, emotional tales of peoples’ fates entangled in major historic developments.