Belarusian author, Svetlana Alexievich, won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” the Swedish Academy said on Thursday, October 8, and awarded her the 8 million crown ($972,000) prize money.
Alexievich who worked both as a teacher and a journalist was born in 1948 in Ukraine. Her work includes a series of books called the Voices of Utopia about individuals in the former Soviet Union as well as works on the consequences of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and the Russian war in Afghanistan.
“She has invented a new literary genre. She transcends journalistic formats and has pressed ahead with a genre that others have helped create,” said Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
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