Literature Nobel Prize for Belarussian writer
Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich on Thursday won the 2015 Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy said. It honoured the 67-year-old “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Alexievich has drawn international acclaim with her emotional accounts of the Chernobyl disaster and World War II based on witness accounts.
Chronicling such horrors in the first person through the words of witnesses, Alexievich has seen her works translated into numerous languages and scooped international awards.
But her books, controversially written in Russian, are not published in her home country, long ruled by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, amid what the author has described as ‘a creeping censorship’.
Alexievich, only the 14th woman to be awarded the Nobel literature prize, takes home the sum of eight million Swedish kronor (around USD 950,000 or 855,000 Euros).
The Nobel awards week continues today with the other most closely-watched Nobel award, the peace prize. The economics prize will wrap up this year's Nobel season on October 12.
The laureates will receive their prizes at formal ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of prize creator Alfred Nobel, a Swedish philanthropist and scientist.
Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize for Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, who turned to traditional herbal medicine to develop novel malaria therapies, should inspire India to focus on scientifically validating and promoting its rich heritage of folk medicine, an expert said on Thursday.
"We have a vast repertoire of traditional medicine and these are documented in our ancient texts such as the Vedas.
But we have to embrace modern science and validate the claims with hard scientific evidence. The Nobel for Tu is well deserved and should encourage India to back traditional knowledge with hard scientific data," G. Padmanaban, former director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, told IANS.
One half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites.
The other half was awarded to Tu for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria.
Tu developed anti-malarial drug artemisinin in the late 1960s and 1970s. Artemisinin is the active constituent of the plant Artemisia annua.