Journalist awarded Nobel lit prize
MINSK, BELARUS— With a reporter’s eye and an artist’s heart, Svetlana Alexievich writes of the catastrophes, upheavals and personal woes that have afflicted the Soviet Union and the troubled countries that succeeded it. Her writings, characterized by plain language and detail so visceral it’s sometimes painful to read, won her this year’s Nobel literature prize.
She is an unusual choice. The Swedish Academy, which picks the prestigious literature laureates, has only twice before bestowed the award on nonfiction — to Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell — and had never honoured journalistic work with a Nobel.
Alexievich’s work straddles the divide. Much of her books is essentially oral history, where the voice is not hers and she chooses only what to include. Her narrative passages are straightforward, free of literary conceits.
“My calling as a writer involves me talking to many people and examining many documents. Nothing is more fantastic than reality. I want to evoke a world not bound by the laws of ordinary verisimilitude, but fashioned in my own image,” she wrote in her 1989 book Zinky Boys, the title a reference to the zinc coffins in which the bodies of Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan were shipped home.
“Her goal is to communicate the history of human feeling. The very fact that it transcends any easy category is part of what makes it great,” said Andrew Kaufman, a Russian literature scholar at the University of Virginia.
The 67-year-old Alexievich’s books have been published in 19 countries, with at least five of them translated into English. She also has written three plays and screenplays for 21 documentary films. She is the 14th woman to win the award since 1901.
Swedish Academy head Sara Danius praised Alexievich as a great and innovative writer who has “mapped the soul” of the Soviet and post-Soviet people.
“She transcends the format of journalism and has developed a new literary genre, which bears her trademark. That doesn’t mean there aren’t predecessors — there are, absolutely — but she has taken the genre further,” Danius told The Associated Press.
Like many intellectuals in Belarus, Alexievich supports the political opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is up for re-election on Sunday. Because of her criticism of the government, she has periodically lived abroad — including in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden — but now lives in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.
This year’s Nobel announcements continue with the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday.