Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". She is the first writer from Belarus to receive the award.
Background
Born in the west Ukrainian town of Stanislav to a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother, Svetlana Alexievich grew up in Belarus. After finishing school she worked as a reporter in several local newspapers before graduating from Belarusian State University and becoming a correspondent for the literary magazine Nyoman in Minsk.During her career in journalism, Alexievich specialised in crafting narratives based on witness testimonies. In the process, she wrote oral histories of several dramatic events in Soviet history: the Second World War, the Afghan War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster. After political persecution by the Lukashenko administration, she left Belarus in 2000. The International Cities of Refuge Network offered her sanctuary and during the following decade she lived in Paris, Gothenburg and Berlin. In 2011, Alexievich moved back to Minsk.
Literary work
Alexievich's books trace the emotional history of the Soviet and post-Soviet individual through carefully constructed collages of interviews. According to Russian writer and critic Dmitry Bykov, her books owe much to the ideas of Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich, who felt that the best way to describe the horrors of the 20th century was not by creating fiction but through recording the testimonies of witnesses. Belarusian poet Uladzimir Nyaklyayew called Adamovich "her literary godfather". He also named the documentary novel I'm From Fire Village by Ales Adamovich, Janka Bryl and Uladzimir Kalesnik, about the villages burned by the German troops during the occupation of Belarus, as the main single book that has influenced Alexievich's attitude to literature. Alexievich has confirmed the influence of Adamovich and Belarusian writer Vasil Bykaŭ, among others. She regards Varlam Shalamov as the best writer of the 20th century.Her most notable works in English translation include a collection of first-hand accounts from the war in Afghanistan and an oral history of the Chernobyl disaster. Alexievich describes the theme of her works this way:
Her first book, War's Unwomanly Face, came out in 1985. It was repeatedly reprinted and sold more than two million copies. The book was finished in 1983 and published in Oktyabr, a Soviet monthly literary magazine, in February 1984. In 1985, the book was published by several publishers, and the number of printed copies reached 2,000,000 in the next five years. This novel is made up of monologues of women in the war speaking about the aspects of World War II that had never been related before. Another book, The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories, describes personal memories of children during wartime. The war seen through women's and children's eyes revealed a new world of feelings. In 1993, she published Enchanted with Death, a book about attempted and completed suicides due to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Many people felt inseparable from the Communist ideology and unable to accept the new order surely and the newly interpreted history.
Her books were not published by Belarusian state-owned publishing houses after 1993, while private publishers in Belarus have only published two of her books: Chernobyl Prayer in 1999 and Second-hand Time in 2013, both translated into Belarusian. As a result, Alexievich has been better known in the rest of world than in Belarus.
She has been described as the first journalist to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. She herself rejects the notion that she is a journalist, and, in fact, Alexievich’s chosen genre is sometimes called “documentary literature”: an artistic rendering of real events, with a degree of poetic license. In her own words:
26 October 2019 Alexievich was elected chairman of the Belarusian PEN Center.
Awards and honours
Alexievich has received many awards, including:- Order of the Badge of Honour
- Saint Euphrosyne of Polotsk Medal
- Nikolay Ostrovskiy literary award of the Union of Soviet Writers
- Oktyabr Magazine Prize
- Литературная премия имени Константина Федина of the Union of Soviet Writers
- Lenin Komsomol Prize — for the book «У войны не женское лицо»
- Literaturnaya Gazeta Prize
- Премия имени Андрея Синявского of Novaya Gazeta — «За творческое поведение и благородство в литературе»
- Prize
- 1996 Tucholsky-Preis
- 1997 Andrei Sinyavsky Prize
- 1998 Leipziger Book Prize on European Understanding
- 1998 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung-Preis
- 1999 Herder Prize
- 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award, Voices from Chernobyl
- 2007 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award
- 2011 Ryszard Kapuściński Award for literary reportage
- 2011 Angelus Award
- 2013 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
- 2013 Prix Médicis essai, La Fin de l'homme rouge ou le temps du désenchantement
- 2014 Officer of the Order of the Arts and Letters
- 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature
- 2017 Arthur Ross Book Award Bronze Medal given by the Council on Foreign Relations for her book Secondhand Time
- 2017 Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement.
- 2018 Belarusian Democratic Republic 100th Jubilee Medal
Books
- У войны не женское лицо, Minsk: Mastatskaya litaratura, 1985.
- * The Unwomanly Face of War,, from Always a Woman: Stories by Soviet Women Writers, Raduga Publishers, 1987.
- * War’s Unwomanly Face, Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1988,.
- * The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, Random House, 2017,
- * Der Krieg hat kein weibliches Gesicht. Henschel, Berlin 1987,.
- * New, expanded edition; übersetzt von Ganna-Maria Braungardt. Hanser Berlin, München 2013,.
- * A Guerra não Tem Rosto de Mulher. Elsinore, 2016.
- * ომს არ აქვს ქალის სახე. თბილისი: ინტელექტი, 2017.
- * Kadın Yok Savaşın Yüzünde. Kafka Yayınevi, 2016. Translated by Günay Çetao Kızılırmak..
- Последние свидетели: сто недетских колыбельных, Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1985
- * Последние свидетели: сто недетских колыбельных. Moscow, Palmira, 2004,
- * Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II. Random House, 2019, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
- * Die letzten Zeugen. Kinder im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neues Leben, Berlin 1989; neu: Aufbau, Berlin 2005,.. Neubearbeitung und Aktualisierung 2008. Aus dem Russischen von Ganna-Maria Braungardt. Berlin: Hanser-Berlin 2014,
- * As Últimas Testemunhas: Cem histórias sem infância. Elsinore, 2017.
- * Son tanıklar - Çocukluğa Aykırı Yüz Öykü. Kafka Yayınevi, 2019. Translated by Aslı Takanay..
- * უკანასკნელი მოწმეები. თბილისი: არტანუჯი, 2018.
- Цинковые мальчики, Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1991.
- * Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. W W Norton 1992, translated by Julia and Robin Whitby.
- * Boys in Zinc. Penguin Modern Classics 2016, translated by Andrew Bromfield.
- * Zinkjungen. Afghanistan und die Folgen. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992,.
- * New, expanded edition; Hanser Berlin, München 2014,.*Зачарованные смертью, Moscow: Slovo, 1994.
- * Rapazes de Zinco: A geração soviética caída na guerra do Afeganistão. Elsinore, 2017.
- * Çinko Çocuklar. Kafka Yayınevi, 2018. Translated by Serdar Arıkan & Fatma Arıkan..
- Зачарованные смертью
- *.
- * Seht mal, wie ihr lebt. Russische Schicksale nach dem Umbruch. Berlin ცინკის ბიჭები. თბილისი: არტანუჯი, 2017.
- Чернобыльская молитва, Moscow: Ostozhye, 1997.
- * Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Dalkey Archive Press 2005, translated by Keith Gessen.
- * Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future. Penguin Modern Classics 2016, translated by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait. New translation of the revised edition published in 2013.
- * Tschernobyl. Eine Chronik der Zukunft. Aufbau, Berlin 2006,.
- *. Vozes de Chernobyl: Histórias de um desastre nuclear., Elsinore, 2016.
- * Çernobil Duası - Geleceğin Tarihi. Kafka Yayınevi, 2017. Translated by Aslı Takanay..
- * ჩერნობილის ლოცვა. თბილისი: არტანუჯი, 2015.
- Время секонд хэнд, Moscow: Vremia, 2013.
- * Час сэканд-хэнд / Святлана Алексіевіч. Перакл. з руск. Ц. Чарнякевіч, В. Стралко. — Мн.: Логвінаў, 2014. — 384 с. —. —.
- * Secondhand-Zeit. Leben auf den Trümmern des Sozialismus. Hanser Berlin, München 2013, ; als Taschenbuch: Suhrkamp, Berlin 2015,.
- * . Random House 2016, translated by Bela Shayevich.
- * O Fim do Homem Soviético. Elsinore, 2017,
- * O Fim do Homem Soviético. Companhia das Letras, 2016,
- * Czasy secondhand. Koniec czerwonego człowieka. Czarne 2014, translated by Jerzy Czech
- * İkinci El Zaman - Kızıl İnsanın Sonu. Kafka Yayınevi, 2016. Translated by Sabri Gürses..
- * სექენდ ჰენდის დრო. თბილისი: არტანუჯი, 2017.
Interviews
- , Interview by Luke Harding, April 2016
- , Dalkey Archive Press
- Canadian Slavonic Papers/ Revue Canadienne des Slavistes
Excerpts
- in The Paris Review, 2015
Articles about Svetlana Alexievich
- Timothy Snyder, NYRB, October 2015
- Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, October 2015.
- Bookforum, August 2016.
- , The Telegraph, 2015
- , Belarus Digest, June 2013
- Belarus Digest, July 2017
Academic Articles about Svetlana Alexievich's works
- Angela Brintlinger
- Daniel Bush
- Jeffrey W. Jones
- Anna Karpusheva
- Johanna Lindbladh
- Irina Marchesini
- Holly Myers
Other
- at Goodreads
- at Rugusavay.com