Svetlana Alexievich, what kind of Nobel Prize? Nobel laureate Alexievich is the embodiment of nationalism and Russophobia

The Nobel Committee voted unanimously to award the prize to Svetlana Alexievich. “This is an outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” explained the committee’s decision, the secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sarah Danius, who announced the name of the laureate.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian. Later the family moved to Belarus, where mother and father worked as rural teachers. In 1967, Svetlana entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University in Minsk, and after graduating, she worked in regional and republican newspapers, as well as in the literary and artistic magazine “Neman”.

In 1985, her book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” was published - a novel about women at the front. Before this, the work lay in the publishing house for two years - the author was reproached for pacifism and debunking the heroic image of the Soviet woman. The total circulation of the book reached 2 million copies, and several dozen performances were staged based on it. The book The Last Witnesses, published the same year, was also dedicated to the war - from the point of view of women and children. Critics called both works “a new discovery of military prose.”

“I create an image of my country from the people living in my time. I would like my books to become a chronicle, an encyclopedia of the generations that I have seen and with which I go. How did they live? What did they believe? How were they killed and did they kill? How they wanted and couldn’t be happy, why they couldn’t do it,” said Svetlana Alexievich in an interview.

Her next chronicle was a novel about the Afghan war, “The Zinc Boys,” published in 1989. To collect material, the writer traveled around the country for four years and talked with former Afghan soldiers and mothers of dead soldiers. For this work, she was harshly criticized by the official press, and in Minsk in 1992, a symbolic “political trial” of the writer and the book was even organized.

"Her technique is a powerful mixture of eloquence and wordlessness, describing incompetence, heroism and sadness,— wrote The Telegraph after “Chernobyl Prayer” was published in the UK.— From the monologues of her characters, the writer creates a story that the reader can really touch, being at any distance from the events.”

The writer’s latest book, Second Hand Time, was published in 2013.

Her books have been published in 19 countries and have been adapted into plays and films. In addition, Svetlana Alexievich became the winner of many prestigious awards: in 2001, the writer was awarded the Remarque Prize, in 2006 - the National Criticism Award (USA), in 2013 - the German Booksellers Criticism Award. In 2014, the writer was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Svetlana Alexievich formulated the main idea of ​​her books as follows: “I always want to understand how much personality there is in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.”

Women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature 13 times. The first to receive this award was Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, and the last to date was Canadian-born Alice Munro in 2013.

Svetlana Alexievich became the first author since 1987 to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, who also writes in Russian.Most often, the prize went to authors writing in English (27 times), French (14 times) and German (13 times). Russian-speaking writers have received this prestigious award five times: in 1933, Ivan Bunin, in 1958, Boris Pasternak, in 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov, in 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and in 1987, Joseph Brodsky.

The writer told what she thought when she learned that she had been awarded the prize.

Of course I wasn't thinking about myself. A few days ago, one German theater, which is staging “War Has No Woman’s Face,” wanted several heroines to come to Frankfurt. And you know, I called 50 numbers, and no one is alive. And before that, I had the same experience with my hero from Chernobyl. And I thought: what a pity that these people don’t know. But they held the book in their hands. I thought that this is not only a reward for me, but a reward... for our culture in our small country, which has been in the grindstone throughout history and now, when it is being pressed from all sides. Somehow I thought about this. I won’t hide it, of course, it was a strong personal joy, and of course there was anxiety, because after all, such great shadows are Bunin, Pasternak... These are too great shadows, and they seemed to come to life for me, this is very serious, and if sometimes I thought that I was tired, that I was disappointed in some things, now I thought that no - it would be impossible to lower the bar. These were my main feelings.

-Who would you like to thank first?

First of all, of course, I would say thanks to my teachers: Adamovich and Bykov. These are my teachers. And Bykov, who was an example of such human perseverance, and Ales Adamovich, who, this is how they put their voice, I would say that he gave me a thinking machine. I don’t know anyone equal in Belarusian culture in terms of the European scope of thinking. These are the people I thought about first when it comes to Belarus. And I have a lot: my heroes, my publishers around the world, people who made me think about something, who gave me some kind of guess about a person, because in order to hear something new about a person, you need to ask in a new way. So we are all teachers. We all stand on the shoulders of our family, on the shoulders of the people we have met.

- What do you think this award will mean to people?

Just yesterday I read on blogs, one person wrote: when they asked me how you feel about the fact that Alexievich could be given a bonus. And he replied: I don’t read books, I just watched the movie. And he says: I feel proud. So I wanted it to be pride. We are a small, proud country.

- Can you explain what it means to you to be a Belarusian writer who writes in Russian?

I write about a utopian man, about a red man, 70 years of this utopia, and then 20 years since we emerge from this utopia. And she spoke Russian. And this is where my language comes from, since my heroes are Ukrainians, and Russians, and Belarusians, and Tatars, and there are even gypsies there - one heroine is a gypsy, that is, they are very different, and I could say that I feel like a person of the Belarusian world , a man of Russian culture, a very powerful inoculation of Russian culture, and a man who lived in the world for a long time and, of course, a cosmopolitan. A person who looks at the world as a vast outer space. Chernobyl also convinced me of this, when I traveled a lot after Chernobyl, and I have the book “Chernobyl Prayer”, and there you know, you don’t feel like “here, I’m a Belarusian,” but you feel that you are equal to this hedgehog, to this hare, to all living things in one world, that we are all one living species. This is a very strong feeling. And all this together is in me.

- Why hasn’t the Belarusian president congratulated you yet and how do the Belarusian authorities generally treat you?

Well, the Belarusian government pretends that I don’t exist, they don’t publish me, I can’t speak anywhere, at least Belarusian television... Oh, is it already here? The Belarusian president too. Two hours have passed since the prize was announced, and I have already received 200 letters, and one very good guy wrote: I wonder how Lukashenko will behave, he gave Domracheva the Hero of the Republic of Belarus, what will he do? Only the Minister of Information of Russia, Grigoriev, congratulated me; he was one of the first to congratulate me.

- Will you accept the title of Hero when offered?

We have to think about it, but this is still not from Lukashenko, but from the homeland.

As soon as it became known about your award, in the comments on Russian websites they wrote that she received the Nobel thanks to her hatred of Russia, the “Russian world”, Putin, etc. Do you think that it’s true that you received the prize thanks to hatred and do you have hatred for the Russian world? By the way, Oleg Kashin considers you an adept of the “Russian world”, Russian literature.

When people have such fanatical ideas, of course they look for them everywhere. I only read a little bit of Kashin, I was very surprised by him. There is also Prilepin, who writes. I want to say that some people write the same thing in Belarus, that I do not hate the Belarusian people, and I hate not only the authorities, but also the people. I don't think anyone likes the truth. I say what I think. I don’t hate, I love the Russian people, I love the Belarusian people, my relatives on my father’s side were all Belarusians, my beloved grandfather, and in general I am a fourth generation rural teacher, my great-grandfather studied with Yakub Kolas, so I feel that this is my homeland, my land. And at the same time, my grandmother, my mother, they are Ukrainian. I love Ukraine very much. And when I was recently on the Maidan, on the square and saw these photographs, young, of the Heavenly Hundred, I stood and cried (my voice trembled). This is also my land. So no, it's not hate. It is difficult to be an honest person nowadays, very difficult. And we must not succumb to this compromise, which the totalitarian government always counts on. I love the book “The Conscience of the Nazis”, I re-read it from time to time, it’s about how fascism crept into the lives of Germans in the 30s. At first, when the Germans were told don’t go to that doctor, don’t go to that tailor, they did the opposite, they went specifically to Jewish doctors, dentists, but the machine worked very powerfully, very powerfully pressed the most primitive buttons, what we see today, especially in Russia, and in ten years they have made a completely different people. I asked my father, “How did you survive it?”, and he only told me one thing: it was very scary. I think that remaining human is always scary, always difficult, even if they are not imprisoned as en masse as in those years, but you see, they are already imprisoning people in Russia, and they are already imprisoning us here. But you need to have this courage, and what they say - well, well.

Can you define your attitude towards the “Russian world”? Which “Russian world” do you like and which one do you dislike, given that you write in Russian?

And my heroes are Russian, right? I love the Russian world, however, I still can’t understand what they mean. I love the kind Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, that world before which the whole world still bows, before that literature, before that ballet, before that great music. Yes, I love this world. But I don’t like the world of Beria, Stalin, Putin, Shoigu - this is not my world.

- The figure of the red man... How relevant is it in today's conditions?

I think that this book is not about the past (“Secondhand Time”), but about where we stand, about our foundation. It's about where we came from. The words are dear to me, I specifically put them in the epigraph, that totalitarianism, the camp, let’s call it that, corrupts both the executioner and the victim. That is, it cannot be said that the victim emerges completely uninjured. We are now living in this traumatized period. We are all, in one way or another, attached, even you (the younger journalistic audience), to this Soviet experience. And the way they let go and even provoked the situation in Russia, and 86% of people became happy with how they killed people in Donetsk and laughed at these “crests.” Or those who now believe that everything can be solved from a position of strength.

Tell me, will Belarusians recognize the first Nobel Prize laureate in the history of the country on the street? And would you like this?

- (Laughed.) In 2013, when I also became one of the three contenders, I remember I was driving so tired, from Berlin or something, and a very young man ran up to me and said: are you Svetlana Alexievich? I say yes. So you're up for Nobel! Oh God, not only do I have a book, I don’t even have a piece of paper. And he takes out a cigarette box - sign it! I am not a vain person at all, and I don’t like publicity, and I don’t like being recognized, because you are different and not always ready for people, you may be very tired, but there are moments when you think: there is something in that you do what hooks this person. It's no accident. If it wasn’t expensive or necessary for him, he wouldn’t have run up with that cigarette box. I don’t want to go out into the street like Kirkorov almost in a woman’s dress, but sometimes when you see that people need it and they are ready to talk to you, and they trust you as an interlocutor, it’s certainly nice.

In your latest book, you show readers how difficult it was for the common man to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Are there any points that are underdescribed and underestimated from this experience that you think need to be emphasized further? Difficulties in transitioning to another stage (of life)?

I think, of course, we have not yet reflected on this time and have not even understood it. I wrote a book, but I think another hundred Solzhenitsyns can work on this site, because this is 70-odd years, millions of dead people, an idea that began with the desire to build a “city of the sun” and ended in such blood. There's a lot more thinking to be done about this. I don't think I managed to tell everything. But what I understood, what I was able to tell, I did in these five books, in this “Red Man” series. One of you should come and do it (smiles).

- What are you working on now?

I currently have two books in progress. Such metaphysical topics. Life, of course, always doesn’t work out for us. Let’s start building something, and everything will end the same way again - as in the joke, “a Kalashnikov assault rifle.” But still, there are other people living now who want to be happy. They want to love. They know the joy of life. Many have seen the world. I am writing a book about love - both men and women talk about love in it. And the second is about old age, about disappearance, about the end of life. Why all this and what is it? Culture, especially Russian, is better prepared for this second book. But to the book about happiness... Everyone wants to be happy, but no one knows what it is.

- We have presidential elections this weekend, will you go and who will you vote for?

I won't go to the polls. But if I went, I would vote for Korotkevich. Out of women's solidarity. Because I see a normal face, I hear normal vocabulary, which I absolutely do not hear from male politicians. Normal suits, normal reactions. Something that male politicians don’t have. And simply because there are some hopes. And the fact that “Korotkevich is a decoy,” as Poznyak writes... I don’t believe it. I don’t know who is behind it, what money... But I know that this would be a new turn in our lives. But I won’t go to the polls, because you and I know who will win. We know that Lukashenko will win. And he will probably have 76%. I think so. He will look at the mood of society and estimate how much he can.

You said, Adamovich, Bykov... And the role of the intelligentsia in Belarusian society, the Belarusian underground, how formative and important is it, how important is it to have these moral authorities?

Our “Mohicans” died at the wrong time. How we now miss Adamovich, Bykov, their words, their understanding, their level. I think some things that are allowed, they wouldn't allow themselves to do that. We cannot afford such freedom - to sit somewhere, like some of my German writer friends - they go to the village and write. And we still live in such an imperfect time, in such an imperfect society. I’m not a barricade person, but I’m constantly drawn to the barricades. Because it's a shame, a shame for what's happening.

Well, I don’t know, you see, we have such power... Well, I hope they will explain to her what Nobel is, and maybe there will be some kind of appropriate reaction, at least cautious. The general level of our political elite is of a Soviet type. Even worse. In the Soviet Union, there were still standards that were not violated. There were people who had to crawl up these stairs for a long time in order to crawl. And today you are from rags to riches - and you are in charge. Who has not been the Minister of Culture - both a builder and some kind of Khabzaite, who has not been. I think you have to do your thing and say what you think.

- How do you assess the fact that you were the first Nobel in Belarus in literature?

It's hard for me to say. As for scientific developments, physics, chemistry, this requires a high technological level in the country, great scientific potential. In my opinion, all this has been destroyed here. We have a lot of talented people, but they are forced to either immigrate, like in Russia, or live their lives incompletely.

- What do you think about the situation in Ukraine and the Russian air base in Belarus?

I don’t think we need a Russian airbase. But I'm afraid that it will be with us. I don’t see Lukashenko having the strength and resources to resist this. And I don’t see these forces of resistance in society. Society will accept whatever the authorities offer, unfortunately. As for Ukraine, I still think that this is, of course, an occupation, a foreign invasion. Although there are people there, and there are many of them, who were dissatisfied with the way things were in Ukraine and wanted some changes, they would never fight. They would have found another way to change. Bring about two dozen trucks here and there will always be people who can be armed. I heard from one person, a seemingly very nice person, a fellow traveler on the train, already elderly, a lieutenant colonel, Russian. But he was so shocked when Crimea was occupied, and said: “Yes, we can also “shake off the old days” and have a pistol and a jacket. Here".

- Are you planning to go to Ukraine?

And it was recently. Grandmother died, and there were no more such close relatives left.

In your opinion, are there any signs of change in Belarus, or hope for change, and in what direction will it develop?

Lukashenko is in a very difficult situation now. He would really like to break away from Russia. But who will give it to him? On the one hand, he is held back by his own past. On the other hand, Putin is holding him. By his own past, I mean that he does not know the other rules of the game. He grew up with this, despite the fact that, admittedly, he has a very strong political instinct.

- Is the base being imposed on him?

The base, of course, is being forced on him. I don't think he wants this himself. The salvation of Belarus would be if it turned towards the European Union. But no one will let her go.

- What would you like to say about the Nobel Commission?

I don't know any of them. I can only say thank you to them.

- When did they call you?

In just a few minutes you learned all this. I had just returned from the dacha and they called.

- Where were you yesterday, at the dacha?

- Are you going to live in Belarus?

- What will you spend the bonus on?

I always buy freedom with bonuses. I always write my books for a very long time - five to ten years. This takes a long time, and you need money, and you need to travel and print. Now I can work calmly without thinking about where to earn them.

- Will your victory affect the attitude towards Belarusian culture abroad, in the world?

It’s hard for me to say, I think there needs to be more than one name. In any case, I was recently in Austria, and people came up to me in a cafe and asked where I was from? I say from Belarus. And they tell me, oh, Domracheva, Lukashenko. So you see, they already know a little.

- Which Belarus would you like to live in?

Of course, I would like Belarus to be like the Scandinavian countries... This is of course a dream for a small country like us. Or at least what the Baltic states look like.

You also received an award for your work on the Afghan war. Do you think that Putin risks repeating the experience of Afghanistan in Syria now?

It was the anniversary of Afghanistan and he (Putin) was asked whether it was a mistake. And he says: no, it’s right that we were there. If it weren't for us, there would be Americans. I think this: after Afghanistan there were Chechens, now there will be Syrians. I met people who fought in Africa during Soviet times. This is a country of soldiers. Or famous soldiers or underground soldiers. But in general we live in a military environment and military thinking. It's from top to bottom. From the government to ordinary people.

- Does this apply to Belarus, Russia, the post-Soviet space?

Yes, unfortunately, we are still tied in this knot.

-Aren’t you going to write in Belarusian?

I often get asked this question. What is the Belarusian language really? I know the Belarusian language, but not enough to write it well. And the language that I know is the People's Commissariat. And in my time, only this language was taught. So for me it will never be an end in itself.

- Where do you feel most comfortable living? What country do you write? You have lived in many places.

Probably at home, in Belarus. In the country.

- Where were you when they called you and told you?

At home, I was at home. I was ironing, by the way.

-You haven’t published in Belarus for twenty years? And you don’t have a single Belarusian prize?

- You said that you still belong to the Belarusian world. What do you think the Belarusian world is?

This is my Belarusian father. His gentle gaze, calm. He will never say anything bad. He was a school director, then a teacher in his old age. These are the old women I grew up among. Village ones. This voice. This poetry of their look. And even when Chernobyl happened, I saw the confusion of officials, military men, scientists, and only these old women, peasants, natural people, found a foothold. They fully understood what had happened. Although it was cruel that such natural people suffered the most.

- Will your victory help the popularization of Belarusian literature and their wider publication? Both in the world and here.

You know, it doesn't depend on that, it all depends on the book. That is, if you present a book, it will not be published because they know this country. Latin Americans proposed a new worldview, and the whole world published them. Richard Kapustinsky offered his view, and it was published everywhere. No matter where or what publishing house I come to, we publish Richard Kapustinsky. The point is not that someone is there in this country, but that we must come into this world with a certain text. We had this text, the Chernobyl text, now this is the text of the post-dictatorship, which is mutating, how. But unfortunately, post-Soviet clichés do not allow us to break out and give some new explanation for this.

You write about the fate of a small Soviet and post-Soviet person, do you agree that your prize is Belarusian?

Still, it’s probably broader, because the heroes of my books are the entire post-Soviet space. “War does not have a woman’s face”... I remember one Belarusian scientist told me, why did you take Russian women as heroines? It was only necessary to take our women, Belarusians. No, because my book is broader philosophically: woman and war, man and war. So it's a broader reach.

- You talked about Kapustinsky, but did his work influence you?

I was very interested in his view, and when I read his book “Empire” for the first time, I saw how interesting he was looking in this field of documentary reporting in which I work. I liked the Polish author Hanna Kral, who works very interestingly in this direction, and Kapustinsky. And there is nothing like this in Belarus, although there is a book by Adamovich, Bryl, and Kolesnik “I am from the village of fire”, I think it is a brilliant book, but there it is a whole layer of culture in Poland as a documentary book. Because Russian and Belarusian cultures have not yet let themselves into the world; they are a little traditional, self-sufficient, in themselves. And I discovered the world precisely through such figures as Hanna Kral, Kapustinsky.

Under no circumstances should the elections be boycotted. Because if you boycott, then Lukashenko gets more chances... Because if eight hundred people out of a thousand people vote, then he will be able to give himself such and such a number of votes. And if only five hundred people come, then his interest will increase. This is wrong behavior. I believe that the call for a boycott is a mistake by the opposition. It can be simply calculated that if we boycott the elections, we give Lukashenko a chance to increase his percentage. It's very simple. I am already somewhat disappointed in our opposition, and in our people, so to speak. Why won't we wake up? And when? I think it's a long way to go.

- When was the last time your book was published in Belarus? Do you remember this?

About 25 years ago...

- Your last “Second-Hand Time” was released?

Oh, yes, but this is such a semi-underground book, non-state.

- When did state publishing houses last publish and what kind?

In my opinion, “Zinc Boys” was published by some small publishing house... Ah, “Belarus” publishing house. But this was also a small publishing house and this was a personal act of the editor.

The whole world and all of Belarus are listening to you now. If you had to say something to Belarusians in one sentence, what would it be?

Let's try to live in a decent country. Everyone should do something for this. You don’t have to wait for your neighbor, your son, your grandson to do it, everyone has to do something. Otherwise, one by one it is very easy to blackmail us, to scare us, and it is very easy to deal with us. Let's go together, but at the same time I am against the revolution. I don't like blood. I don't want even one young guy's life to be lost here. I believe we must find our Belarusian “Gandhism”. If we are together, we will find him, of course.

There are a lot of wars in the world now, are you, as a writer, disappointed that books don’t seem to teach people anything? Is it possible now for a rapprochement between East and West, not a new cold war, but a common world, not Russian, not Western?

There are not only books in the world, Tolstoy, someone else, but there is also the Bible, and Francis of Assisi, and Surazhsky stood on a stone for how many days, these religious martyrs... But man does not change. But I still want to think that something is changing, although the events in Donetsk and the war in Odessa scared me personally: how quickly culture flies away and how quickly the beast emerges from a person. So I think if we stop doing our job, things could get worse. How is it with the Apostle Paul? Woe to me if I stop preaching. As for anti-Westernism, which is especially true in Russia now, I think that this will do. Will leave along with the current leaders. There is no such hatred among the people. Neither the Russian nor the Belarusian people have hatred for the West, for Europe. This is all foam created by politicians. Well, there will always be young guys who want to play their own game. So it’s not deep, but the only thing is that we will live in such an intermediate time for a long time. We were too naive in the 90s, when we thought that once and then we would become free. No, this is impossible, as it turned out. It seemed to everyone that people would read Solzhenitsyn and immediately become clean, but every day people killed someone in the entrance. I think the most difficult legacy that remains from socialism is a person, a traumatized person, because the camp corrupts both the executioner and the victim.

- How do you start writing? Tell us what the process is.

This is a long question. This is a big conversation.

became Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich with the formulation “for the polyphonic sound of her prose and the perpetuation of suffering and courage.”

AiF.ru tells what is known about Alexievich and what she writes about.

Who is Alexievich and what does she write about?

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Alexievich was born on May 13, 1948 in the city of Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). As a child, she moved with her parents to Belarus. She worked as a German language teacher and graduated from the journalism department of the Belarusian State University (BSU). In 1983 she was admitted to the USSR Writers' Union.

Alexievich wrote the following works: “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face”, “Zinc Boys”, “Second Hand Time”, “Chernobyl Prayer”.

In 1989, Alexievich published the novel “Zinc Boys” about the USSR war in Afghanistan in 1979-1989, for which the writer was tried “for libel” in 1992 in Belarus, accused of distorting and falsifying the stories of “Afghans” and their mothers. The public and Western cultural figures rose in defense of the author. As a result, the trial was suspended.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the writer has lived and published in Germany, France and Italy. In 2013 she returned to Belarus. In her interviews, Alexievich spoke negatively about the fact of the reunification of Crimea with Russia and politics President Putin.

In 2013, Alexievich was one of the contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but she received it Canadian writer Alice Monroe. In 2014, Alexievich again entered the top three, but the winner was Frenchman Patrick Modiano.

Who did Alexievich beat?

The contenders for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, according to bookmakers, were Japanese writer Haruki Murakami,Kenyan writer Ngui Wa Thiong'o, Norwegian playwright Jun Fosse, American classic Philip Roth, Austrian Peter Handke.

How much money will Alexievich receive?

According to the tradition of recent years, the value of the Nobel Prize is 8,000,000 Swedish kronor. True, due to the weakening of the Swedish currency, for the first time in 15 years, translated into dollars, this amount will be less than a million dollars, namely $953,000. The award ceremony will take place on December 10 in Stockholm, the day of the death of the founder of the award. Alfred Nobel.

STOCKHOLM, October 8. /Corr. TASS Irina Dergacheva/. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. This was announced by the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sarah Danius.

"Unanimity and Enthusiasm"

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences unanimously voted for the new Nobel laureate, Danius noted.

She said that the Swedish Academy had already called Alexievich, who greeted the news of her award with one word - “Fantastic!”

When asked why the prize was awarded to the Belarusian writer this year - her name has been named among the favorites for several years in a row - Danius replied: “Because the Swedish Academy decided so.”

Svetlana Alexievich is the sixth Nobel Prize laureate to write in Russian. This award was given to writers from Asia 6 times, representatives of Latin America and Africa received it 4 times each, North America - 12, Europe - 85, Australia - once. 12 laureates are women, the remaining 95 are men. 24 of them wrote or are writing in English, 14 in French, 11 in German, 7 in Swedish and 1 in Chinese.

"Monument to Suffering and Courage"

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich “for her polyphonic creativity - a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” according to the website of the prize organizing committee.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in the city of Ivano-Frankovsk in the Ukrainian SSR in the family of a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother. After his father completed his military service, the family moved to the Belarusian SSR, where the parents worked as teachers. After graduating from school, Alexievich worked as a teacher and journalist. From 1967 to 1972 she studied journalism at Minsk University.

Because of her opposition views, after the exam she was able to get a job only in the provincial Brest newspaper. Upon returning to Minsk, she began working at Selskaya Gazeta. For many years, Alexievich collected materials for the book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” (1985), based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in World War II. The work is the first in a powerful series of Voices of Utopia, which describes life in the Soviet Union from a private point of view.

With his unique working method - "a conscientiously composed collage of human voices - Alexievich deepens our understanding of an entire era," the organizing committee notes. Her book “Chernobyl Prayer” (1997) is dedicated to the consequences of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1985. The book "The Zinc Boys" (1990) describes the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan in 1979-1989. The last work, Second Hand Time (2013), concludes Voices of Utopia. The book The Last Witnesses (1985) also belongs to the same lifelong project of the author.

The records of the nurse and writer Sofia Fedorchenko (1888-1959) about the experiences of Russian soldiers during the First World War and the documentary stories of Ales Adamovich (1927-1994) about the Second World War played an important role in Alexievich’s work. Because of her criticism of the regime, she lived abroad for periods, including in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden.

Alexievich has already received the Remarque Award (2001), the National Criticism Award (USA, 2006), and the Reader's Choice Award based on the results of the reader's vote for the Big Book Award (2014) for the book “Second Hand Time.”

The Belarusian writer and journalist was considered one of the contenders for the Nobel Prize in 2013. But that year the award was given to Canadian writer Alice Munro.

"I think about the great Russian writers"

Svetlana Alexievich, having learned that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize, thought about the great Russian writers who also received this award.

“Becoming a laureate is a huge event. It was a completely unexpected, almost disturbing feeling. I think about great Russian writers such as Boris Pasternak,” she said in an interview with SVT TV channel.

Alexievich confirmed that she will definitely come to the award ceremony, which will take place on the day of Alfred Nobel’s death at the Stockholm Philharmonic on December 10. On this day, from the hands of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, the laureates will receive a gold medal with the image of the founder of the most prestigious award and a diploma, and the next day the Nobel Foundation will transfer the due monetary component to their bank accounts.

The monetary component of the Nobel Prize in 2015, as in the previous two years, is 8 million crowns. But due to the weakening of the Swedish krona, this amount - for the first time since 2001 - will be less than $1 million, namely $950 thousand.

About the award

The Nobel Prize for Literature is an annual award for achievements in the field of literature. Awarded since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation. The 2014 prize winner was the French writer Patrick Modiano, author of the books “Cafe of Lost Youth,” “Horizon,” and “Street of Dark Shops.”

Nobel week started on October 5th. The names of laureates in the fields of medicine, physics and chemistry have already become known. The winner of the Economics Prize, established by the Swedish Bank of Sweden in memory of Alfred Nobel, will be announced on Monday, October 12.