Investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy on Thursday "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
The 67-year-old author has written several books that lend a human voice to major historical events in the former Soviet Union and Russia such as World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War, and the Chernobyl disaster.
When Permanent Secretary Sara Darius broke the good new to the "overjoyed" writer she had just one word to say in response, "fantastic."
Alexievich's 40-year career has been spent "mapping the Soviet and post-Soviet individual," Darius said. But her writing is about more than just chronically historical events, she adds a layer of humanity and emotion to her writing and through her unique style, has managed to develop a wholly new genre.
"She's actually devised a new genre, a new kind of literary genre," Darius said. "It's true achievement."
One of her notable works is her first book The War's Unwomanly Face in which she lends a voice to hundreds of the more than 1 million Soviet women who fought on the front lines during World War II. Darius recommended readers start with this book when exploring Alexievich's work.
"She's offering us a history of emotions, a history of the soul if you wish," Darius said.
Alexievich says that when searching for the right genre to use when portraying her "vision of the world," she settled on one where "human voices speak for themselves."
"Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire," Alexievich wrote on her website.
"But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts, I'm writing a history of human feelings."
In 2005 she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster and in 2013 she was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.
The association said that she has created "her own literary genre — one that resonates all over the world as a powerful choir of witnesses and testimonies."
The writer faced censorship and persecution in her native Belarus after current president Alexander Lukashenko took control of the country in 1994. Her books were no longer published in the country and were removed from the school curriculum. Attacks against her increased over the years, she was banned from making public appearances, and her phones were bugged. In 2000 Alexievich fled Belarus and moved to Paris after the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) offered her sanctuary. She returned to Minsk in 2011.
She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2014 by Ural Federal University.
According to Russian news site Yekaterinburg News, "Aleksievich's writing displays large-scale disasters of the 20th century using private human history to create a portrait of time."
Here's a list of her works in published in English:
* War's Unwomanly Face (1988)
* Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War (1992)
* Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (1992)
* Voices from Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future (1999)
* Voices from Chernobyl: the Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (2005)
A Twitter account claiming to belong to the author broke the news nearly two hours before the official announcement.
The account later claimed it was a hoax set up by Italian journalist Tommasso Debenedetti.
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Nobel Prize In Literature Awarded To Belarusian Writer Svetlana Alexievich