Belarusian journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich has won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature 2015.
The committee selected the author “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. Her non-fiction works are thought of as a literary chronicle of the Soviet people. Professor Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, presented the award Alexievich yesterday. You can watch a video of the ceremony here. Alexievich discussed winning the prize with Julia Chayka, calling from Nobelprize.org. Check it out:
Of course, it’s a joy, it would be strange to hide it. But it makes me anxious as well because it revived all these great shadows: Solzhenitsyn, Bunin, Pasternak, all the Russian Nobel Laureates in literature. Belarus never got a Prize. It is of course an anxious feeling to realize that neither tiredness nor disappointment may let me lower the bar now. It’s been a long way, a huge work has been done and something new is waiting for me.