The 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature is Svetlana Alexievich

October 8, 2015 4:14 AM

Svetlana Alexievich is the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature: "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich is a Belarusian writer and is unusual among Nobel laureates in that she is primarily a non-fiction writer. Her most famous book is Voices from Chernobyl, and you can read an extract in The Paris Review. You can read more about her books on her website and read excerpts in English. John Lloyd wrote a long review of her book Zinky Boys for the London Review of Books. And you can read an interview with her on the home page of her American publisher, Dalkey Archive.
posted by Kattullus (24 comments total)

So much to read, so many authors I've not had the privilege of reading, so little time. Congratulations to her and her fellow Belarusians.
posted by Fizz at 4:22 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nobel Prize in Literature nerd par excellence, Michael A. Orthofer, will update this blogpost with links and reactions throughout the day.
posted by Kattullus at 4:23 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

"1989 saw the publication of The Boys in Zinc, a book about the criminal Soviet-Afghan war that had been concealed from the Soviet people for ten years. To collect material for the book Alexiyevich was traveling around the country for four years to meet war victims' mothers and veterans of the Afghan war. She also visited the war zone in Afghanistan. The book was a bombshell and many people could not forgive the author for de-mythologizing the war. In the first place the military and Communist papers attacked Alexiyevich. In 1992, court proceedings have been opened against the author and her book in Minsk. The democratically minded public rose in defense of the book. The case was closed."

With Russia having just entered the war in Syria, this seems like a very timely award.
posted by three blind mice at 4:41 AM on October 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

Reading the review of Zinky Boys, it sounds amazing.

Out of curiosity, I just checked to see if any of her books were available on Audible, since they have the sound of something that might work well on a long, meditative drive. Sadly, it only has other Svetlanas, most with titles like Under the Baron's Control: Disciplining His Little Girl.

Hopefully with the attention and recognition will come broader distribution as well.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:30 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Zinky Boys is indeed totally compelling and should be back in print now. Both books are full of scenes that will never ever go out of your mind. In the Chernobyl one you have soldiers without protection, bribed with vodka, sent into the contaminated zone which has been abandoned by all humans but is still full of domestic and farm animals. Their job all day is to shoot every single animal, many of which are pets coming up to them with curiosity. They go insane.

In Zinky Boys you have army mothers refusing to believe that the welded-tight coffin delivered to them really contains their son, there's been a mix-up, I can just tell it's not him, they try to phone the government...
posted by colie at 5:42 AM on October 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

Sadly, it only has other Svetlanas, most with titles like Under the Baron's Control: Disciplining His Little Girl.

Initially, I read "other Svetlanas" as "other books by Svetlana Alexievich" and was very interested to learn that there was Nobel Prize Winner authored Victorian erotica.

We're not all highbrow readers, people.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:45 AM on October 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Nobel Prize Winner authored Victorian erotica.

Challenged accepted!
posted by Fizz at 5:54 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

In seriousness, I do think it's great that a non-fiction writer won. There's so much good, inventive, and important non-fiction out there, that it's a shame to exclude it from the definition of literature.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:01 AM on October 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

Dang, this stuff sounds amazing. Goes to the top of my reading list!
posted by selfnoise at 6:19 AM on October 8, 2015

i am not sure amazing is how i would describe it. depressing, terrifying, hopeless, oppressive, despairing...
posted by andrewcooke at 6:26 AM on October 8, 2015

(raises monocle)

Amazing LY DEPRESSING, I THINK YOU MEAN.

(slowly lowers monocle while retrieving the polishing cloth)
posted by selfnoise at 6:32 AM on October 8, 2015

Out of curiosity, I just checked to see if any of her books were available on Audible

I was looking at Abebooks for good deals used (nope!) and they do have a DVD of some kind of audio theater production of Voices from Chernobyl.
posted by selfnoise at 7:23 AM on October 8, 2015

it's great that a non-fiction writer won.

It's non fiction but Zinky Boys' stories are set down with the kind of economy and precision novelists spend a lifetime trying to achieve:

'I went out on to the balcony, looked down and saw two officers and a doctor. Back in the flat I looked through the peep-hole to see where they were going. They stopped in our hallway and turned right. Was it to the neighbours? They had a son in the army, too. The bell ... I open the door:
'"Has my son been killed?"
'"Be brave, Mother..." "Mother", they called me.'
posted by colie at 9:47 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

The newest Nobel Prize winner wasted no time In slamming her country’s dictator.
posted by Kabanos at 9:48 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, Belarus is the only country where the KGB is still called the KGB.
posted by I-baLL at 9:54 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm looking forward to reading her.
posted by doctornemo at 9:58 AM on October 8, 2015

IS this the first, except for Churchill, whose representive work is essayistic?
posted by PinkMoose at 11:18 AM on October 8, 2015

I don't know if I'd call her works essayistic. But that said, Theodore Mommsen received the 1902 prize for historical writing, like Churchill, and a pair of philosophers have received it, Henri Bergson in 1927 and Bertrand Russell in 1950.
posted by Kattullus at 11:35 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would argue Octavio Paz got it as much for his essays as for his poetry (his complete works run 15 volumes and only two contain poetry), Le Clézio also has as many books of essays as novels, then it all depends how you want to classify Prudhomme, Bergson, Camus and Sartre.
posted by Omon Ra at 11:36 AM on October 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does anyone know if she wrote a short piece called "A Man's History" or something along those lines? I started reading it in Russian by way of a Facebook post but I can't find any English-language acknowledgement that it exists.
posted by griphus at 7:05 PM on October 8, 2015

Upon further research it is an excerpt from Second-Hand Time. Curiously the phrase "second-hand" in the original Russian title is in transliterated English.
posted by griphus at 7:12 PM on October 8, 2015

scenes that will never ever go out of your mind...

Amazing LY DEPRESSING, I THINK YOU MEAN.

NPR's Neda Ulaby tells us about Svetlana Alexievich...

BILL BUFORD: This isn't, like, someone going out with a tape recorder. It is someone who's experiencing something really profound - death, fear, loss of a family, loss of a future, loss of the value of life.

ULABY: Something Svetlana Alexievich experienced firsthand when she visited a civilian hospital in Afghanistan and saw a little boy in bed holding a teddy bear with his teeth.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ALEXIEVICH: (Through interpreter) I asked his mother why. She lifted the blanket, and then I saw that the boy didn't have arms or legs. It was very hard to witness that, but I had to.

posted by kliuless at 9:54 PM on October 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Timothy Snyder in The New York Review of Books: Svetlana Alexievich: The Truth in Many Voices
posted by Kabanos at 10:09 AM on October 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just wanted to say before this thread expires: I got my hands on Zinky Boys and it's truly powerful. Highly recommended.
posted by selfnoise at 7:46 PM on October 22, 2015 [3 favorites]