Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own nonfiction genre, which gathers a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include War’s Unwomanly Face (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Zinky Boys (1990), Voices from Chernobyl (1997), and Secondhand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”
ARTICLES FEATURING
“Dear House, Don’t Burn”: On Svetlana Alexievich’s “Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II”
Heather Altfeld listens to the voices in “Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II” by Svetlana Alexievich....
I Knew Somebody Would Come: Svetlana Alexievich’s Wars
Paul Delany on Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich and the legacies of war....
Girls and Men: On Svetlana Alexievich’s “The Unwomanly Face of War”
Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky consider “The Unwomanly Face of War” by Svetlana Alexievich....
Interesting Times: Svetlana Alexievich on the Dangers of a Great Idea
Like Trump, Putin was looking for “greatness.” We can learn from Svetlana Alexievich’s account....
Pure Literature: On Herta Müller and Svetlana Alexievich
James Thomas Snyder considers the work of two Nobel laureates from Central and Eastern Europe, Herta Müller and Svetlana Alexievich....
