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Svetlana Alexievich Wins Nobel Prize in Literature Svetlana Alexievich, Belarussian Voice of Survivors, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
(about 9 hours later)
Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian journalist and prose writer known for deeply researched works about female Russian soldiers in World War II and the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” the Swedish Academy announced.Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarussian journalist and prose writer known for deeply researched works about female Russian soldiers in World War II and the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” the Swedish Academy announced.
Ms. Alexievich, 67, is the 14th woman to win the literature prize and a rarity in that her work is mainly nonfiction. Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said she had created “a history of emotions — a history of the soul, if you wish.” Ms. Alexievich, 67, is the 14th woman to win the literature prize, and one of just a few Nobel laureates to be recognized for nonfiction. While the Nobel committee has occasionally awarded the prize to philosophers and historians, including Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill, it has been more than half a century since a dedicated nonfiction writer has won what many regard as literature’s most prestigious award.
Ms. Alexievich’s works often blend literature and journalism. She is best known for giving voice to women and men who lived through major events like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that lasted from 1979 to 1989 and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, in which her own sister was killed and her mother was blinded. The selection of Ms. Alexievich was lauded as a long overdue corrective, and as a high point for journalism as a literary art. By placing her work alongside those of international literary giants like Gabriel García Márquez, Albert Camus, Alice Munro and Toni Morrison, the Nobel committee has anointed a genre that is often viewed as a vehicle for information rather than an aesthetic endeavor.
“She’s devised a new kind of literary genre,” Ms. Danius said, adding, “It’s a true achievement not only in material but also in form.” Ms. Alexievich’s works, which delve into collective and individual memories, straddle that divide.
Perhaps her most acclaimed book is “War’s Unwomanly Face” (1988), based on interviews with hundreds of women who took part in World War II. The book is the first in a series, “Voices of Utopia,” that depicted life in the Soviet Union from the point of view of ordinary citizens. “It’s a true achievement not only in material but also in form,” said Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, adding that Ms. Alexievich’s work amounts to “a history of emotions — a history of the soul, if you wish.”
“I’m very happy,” Ms. Alexievich said in a statement released by her agent. “And overwhelmed by a storm of complex feelings. Joy, of course. But alarm as well. The great shadows of Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn have come alive. The greater part of my path has been traveled, but much work remains ahead of me, and many new turns. Now I cannot let myself slide.” The stories Ms. Alexievich tells are drawn from historical facts and oral histories, but have a lyrical quality and a distinct style and perspective. She is best known for giving voice to women and men who lived through major events like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, in which her sister was killed and her mother was blinded.
Ms. Alexievich often put herself at risk by taking on contentious elements of Soviet history and challenging the official narrative of how events had an impact on ordinary citizens. “What she’s doing, there’s a lot of art in it,” said Philip Gourevitch, a writer for The New Yorker who has called on the Nobel judges to recognize nonfiction as literature. “She has a voice that runs through her work that’s much more than the sum of the voices she’s collected.”
“She was seen as a traitor, as unpatriotic,” said Gerald Howard, the executive editor at Doubleday. He published Ms. Alexievich’s book “Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From a Forgotten War,” about the occupation of Afghanistan, when he was a senior editor at W. W. Norton. Many of her books are woven together from detailed oral histories. Perhaps her most acclaimed work is “War’s Unwomanly Face” (1988), based on interviews with hundreds of women who took part in World War II. The book is the first in a series, “Voices of Utopia,” that depicted life in the Soviet Union from the point of view of ordinary citizens.
“She was vilified all over the place for this book,” he said, “and she didn’t back down for a second.” Ms. Alexievich has said that her practice of blending journalism and literary flourishes was inspired by the Russian tradition of oral storytelling.
Oleg Kashin, a Russian opposition journalist who was beaten so severely by assailants for his work that doctors had to amputate a finger, wrote Thursday in praise of Ms. Alexievich’s work and noted that the prize will amplify her criticism of post-Soviet authoritarianism and in particular the government of President Vladimir V. Putin. “I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me,” she said in an interview posted on the website of Dalkey Archive Press, which published her book “Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster” in English. “Each person offers a text of his or her own.”
“A person appears, whose voice sounds undoubtedly louder, than the voice of any Russians,” Mr. Kashin wrote on Slon, a Russian news portal. “Only Vladimir Putin can compete with a Nobel laureate in the world media context, but then, such a competition for Putin will surely be a losing one. Putin will say ‘yes’ and the laureate will say ‘no’, and that will be the last word.” Ms. Alexievich’s work fits into a longstanding literary tradition of deeply reported narrative nonfiction written with the sweep and the style of a novel. Practitioners includes luminaries like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion and, more recently, writers like Katherine Boo and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. Fans of Ms. Alexievich’s books say their literary quality helps them to transcend the particular historical circumstances she is exploring, lending an element of universality to her stories.
In the United States, Ms. Alexievich is best known for the oral history “Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster,” which was translated by the writer Keith Gessen and published in 2005 by Dalkey Archive Press. The book, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident. She spent 10 years visiting the Chernobyl zone and conducted more than 500 interviews. “If this were purely for literature, rather than this mix of nonfiction and fiction that she works so well, she would deserve to get this prize because she’s so deeply rooted in a sense of humanity and suffering,” said John O’Brien, the publisher of Dalkey Archive Press.
In an interview posted on the Dalkey Archive Press website, Ms. Alexievich said her technique of blending journalism and literature was inspired by the Russian tradition of oral storytelling. “I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me,” she said. “Each person offers a text of his or her own.” In a statement released by her agent, Ms. Alexievich said she was “very happy” but also overwhelmed by the pressure that comes with such a distinction.
The Nobel Prize in Literature, one of the most prestigious prizes in the literary world, is given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work rather than a single title. It has been awarded over the years to international literary giants like Gabriel García Márquez, Albert Camus and Toni Morrison, as well as to more obscure authors. “The greater part of my path has been traveled, but much work remains ahead of me,” she said. “Now I cannot let myself slide.”
Over the past decade, the academy has regularly given the prize to European writers who were not widely read in English, including the French novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio (2008), the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller (2009) and the Swedish poet and translator Tomas Transtromer (2011). Many were surprised last year when the award went to Patrick Modiano, a French novelist who is well known in his native country but did not have much of a global following when the prize was announced. The Nobel Prize in Literature is given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work rather than a single title. While the prize has been awarded over the years to international literary giants, the past decade has seen the academy regularly give it to European writers not widely read in English, including the French novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio (2008), the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller (2009), the Swedish poet and translator Tomas Transtromer (2011) and the French novelist Patrick Modiano (2014). Honoring Ms. Alexievich continues that pattern, although as a journalist, she stands apart from recent laureates.
The award to Ms. Alexievich continues that pattern, though, as a nonfiction writer, she stands out from the recent crop of laureates. While the Nobel committee has occasionally awarded the prize to nonfiction writers, including Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill, it has been decades since a journalist or historian has won. Some prominent writers, among them the New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, have called for the Nobel judges to recognize nonfiction as a worthy art form. Born to a Belarussian father and a Ukrainian mother in what is now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, Ms. Alexievich studied journalism in college, and after graduation, worked at a newspaper in Brest, near the Polish border. Later, she began searching for a literary form that would allow her to capture the lives and voices of the individuals at the center of historic events. She gravitated toward oral history, which allowed her to adopt her subject’s voices like a chameleon and to reflect a diverse range of experience.
In an interview, Mr. Gourevitch said the honor for Ms. Alexievich was a significant step forward for nonfiction writers and the genre’s place in the literary world. “What she’s doing, there’s a lot of art in it,” he said. “She has a voice that runs through her work that’s much more than the sum of the voices she’s collected.” “I’ve been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life,” she wrote on her website. “I tried this and that and finally I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves.”
Ms. Alexievich’s books, which are deeply rooted in fact, have been praised for their literary quality. “She’s a masterful writer,” said John O’Brien, the publisher of Dalkey Archive Press. “If this were purely for literature, rather than this mix of nonfiction and fiction that she works so well, she would deserve to get this prize because she’s so deeply rooted in a sense of humanity and suffering.”
Born to a Belarussian father and a Ukrainian mother in what is now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, she studied journalism, and after graduation, she began work at a newspaper in Brest, near the Polish border.
On her website, Ms. Alexievich described her desire to find a literary form that would allow her to capture the lives and voices of the individuals at the center of historic events. “I’ve been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life,” she wrote. “I tried this and that and finally I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves.”
She added, “But I don’t just record a dry history of events and facts, I’m writing a history of human feelings.”She added, “But I don’t just record a dry history of events and facts, I’m writing a history of human feelings.”
The academy said the most significant influences on Ms. Alexievich’s work were the notes by the nurse and author Sofia Fedorchenko (1888–1959) of soldiers’ experiences in World War I, and the reports by the Belarussian author Ales Adamovich (1927–1994) from World War II. Ms. Alexievich often took risks by taking on contentious elements of Soviet history and challenging the official narrative.
Because of her criticism of the government in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, Ms. Alexievich has periodically lived abroad, in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden, among other places. “She was seen as a traitor, as unpatriotic,” said Gerald Howard, the executive editor at Doubleday. He published Ms. Alexievich’s book “Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From a Forgotten War,” about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the trauma experienced by the Russian soldiers and their families, when he was a senior editor at W. W. Norton. The title refers to the zinc coffins that dead Russian soldiers were sent home in. “She was vilified all over the place for this book,” he said, “and she didn’t back down for a second.”
In a 2013 interview with German television after winning a German publishing prize, she said she hoped the award would give her “a degree of protection” in Belarus, where press freedom is under constant threat. Because of her criticism of the government in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, Ms. Alexievich has periodically lived abroad, in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden, among other places. For much of her adult life, though, she has lived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. In a 2013 interview with German television, she said she hoped the international attention would give her “a degree of protection” in Belarus, where press freedom is under constant threat.
“Writers are always vulnerable in every dictatorship,” she said. Still, she said that she could write only in Belarus, “where I can hear what people are talking about on the streets, in cafes, or at the neighbor’s place.”
Still, she said that she could write her books only at home, in Belarus, “where I can hear what people are talking about on the streets, in cafes, or at the neighbor’s place.” While she has developed a global audience over the years, currently just three of her books are available in English, though more translations are in the works. In the United States, Ms. Alexievich is best known for the oral history “Voices From Chernobyl,” which was published in 2005. The book, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident. She spent 10 years visiting the Chernobyl zone and conducted more than 500 interviews.
“I’m always sticking up my antennas and listening,” she said. “If I didn’t hear these voices, the tone of my books wouldn’t be right. So going away permanently was never an option.” Her most recent book, “Second-Hand Time,” which was published in 2013 and is currently being translated into English, is her biggest and most ambitious — another work of oral history that draws on hundreds of interviews with Russians who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, spanning from the early 1990s to 2012.
In that same interview, Ms. Alexievich recalled how the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had affected her family. “The scope and consistency of her project is unique — the sheer number of people whose stories she’s been able to record,” the writer Keith Gessen, who translated her book about Chernobyl into English, said in an email. “And as with a lot of truly ingenious literary projects, a reaction people can have is, ‘That’s not very hard! I could have done that!’ Which is true. Except no one else did.”
“The only thing that pains me is: Why haven’t we learned from all the suffering?” she said. “Why can’t we say: I don’t want to be a slave anymore. Why do we suffer again and again? Why does this remain our burden and fate?” Some see an obvious political message in the Nobel committee’s choice. Ms. Alexievich’s honor arrives at a moment when Russia is once again flexing its military muscles, in Ukraine and in Syria. In choosing Ms. Alexievich, the Swedish committee continued a long tradition of using the award to tweak Soviet and now post-Soviet authority.
“I don’t have an answer,” she added, “but I want my books to motivate readers to think about those questions for themselves.” Of the five previous Nobel Prizes in Literature awarded to authors writing in Russian, only Mikhail Sholokhov was on good enough terms with the government to receive his award and remain a resident of the Soviet Union. The others — Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky — either received the award in exile, or were denied a visa to attend the Stockholm ceremony.
Ms. Alexievich noted that one of her books is called “Second-Hand Time,” her diagnosis of the post-Soviet era. On Thursday, Belarus’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has been a frequent target of Ms. Alexievich’s writing, issued a terse congratulatory note.
“Books like this are needed today because we live with the feeling of defeat,” she said. “We never wanted to be what has become of us today.” At a news conference after her award was announced, Ms. Alexievich pointedly referred to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “occupation.” The spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Dmitri S. Peskov, dismissed Ms. Alexievich’s critique of Russian military aggression. “Apparently, Svetlana just doesn’t have enough information to offer a clear evaluation of what is happening in Ukraine,” Mr. Peskov said, according to Interfax.
She added: “In my view, it’s the writer’s duty whether Russian, Belarussian or post-Soviet to write books like these. If we don’t understand what was wrong with us, we’ll never rid ourselves of our past.” Some dissident writers in Russia took her selection as an encouraging sign that opposition writers were being heard.
Oleg Kashin, a Russian opposition journalist who was beaten so severely by assailants for his work that doctors had to amputate a finger, wrote that the prize would amplify Ms. Alexievich’s criticism of post-Soviet authoritarianism and, in particular, the government of Mr. Putin.
“A person appears, whose voice sounds undoubtedly louder, than the voice of any Russians,” Mr. Kashin wrote on Slon, a Russian news portal. “Only Vladimir Putin can compete with a Nobel laureate in the world media context, but then, such a competition for Putin will surely be a losing one. Putin will say ‘yes’ and the laureate will say ‘no,’ and that will be the last word.”