Svetlana Alexievich

Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia (The British Library)
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Svetlana Aleksievich (aka Alexievich, b. 1948) is the first Belarusian writer and the first woman author writing in Russian, who in 2015 was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine) to Ukrainian mother and Belarusian father, Aleksievich provides Ukraine with an opportunity to take pride in her, too. The author of

Voices from Utopia

(a documentary prose series based on oral history), Aleksievich was praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for “polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. All her works are focused on the exploration of the “history of the Russian-Soviet soul”, or, as Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, put it, the “Red Individual”. A critic of the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko…

3138 words

Citation: Rogatchevskaia, Ekaterina. "Svetlana Alexievich". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13646, accessed 04 December 2024.]

13646 Svetlana Alexievich 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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