Svetlana Aleksievich for what is the award. Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature - the first in the history of Belarus

The Nobel Committee voted unanimously to award the prize to Svetlana Alexievich. "This outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” explained the committee’s decision, Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sarah Danius, who announced the name of the laureate.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian. Later family moved to Belarus, where her mother and father worked as rural teachers. In 1967, Svetlana entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University state university in Minsk, and after graduating, she worked in regional and republican newspapers, as well as in the literary and artistic magazine “Neman”.

In 1985, her book “War Has No woman's face"- a novel about women front-line soldiers. Before this, the work lay in the publishing house for two years - the author was accused of pacifism and debunking heroic image Soviet woman. The total circulation of the book reached 2 million copies, and several dozen performances were staged based on it. The book The Last Witnesses, published the same year, was also dedicated to the war - from the point of view of women and children. Critics called both works “a new discovery of military prose.”

“I create an image of my country from the people living in my time. I would like my books to become a chronicle, an encyclopedia of the generations that I have seen and with which I go. How did they live? What did they believe? How were they killed and did they kill? How they wanted and couldn’t be happy, why they couldn’t do it,” said Svetlana Alexievich in an interview.

Her next chronicle was a novel about the Afghan war, “The Zinc Boys,” published in 1989. To collect material, the writer traveled around the country for four years and talked with former Afghan soldiers and mothers of dead soldiers. For this work, she was harshly criticized by the official press, and in Minsk in 1992, a symbolic “political trial” of the writer and the book was even organized.

"Her technique is a powerful mixture of eloquence and wordlessness, describing incompetence, heroism and sadness,— wrote The Telegraph after “Chernobyl Prayer” was published in the UK.— From the monologues of her characters, the writer creates a story that the reader can really touch, being at any distance from the events.”

Latest on this moment The writer’s book “Second Hand Time” was published in 2013.

Her books have been published in 19 countries and have been adapted into plays and films. In addition, Svetlana Alexievich became a laureate of many prestigious awards: in 2001, the writer was awarded the Remarque Prize, in 2006 - the National Criticism Award (USA), in 2013 - the German Booksellers Criticism Award. In 2014, the writer was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Svetlana Alexievich formulated the main idea of ​​her books as follows: “I always want to understand how much personality there is in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.”

Women became laureates Nobel Prize in literature 13 times. The first to receive this award was Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, and the last to date was Canadian-born Alice Munro in 2013.

Svetlana Alexievich became the first author since 1987 to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, who also writes in Russian.Most often, the prize went to authors writing in English (27 times), French (14 times) and German (13 times). Russian-speaking writers have received this prestigious award five times: in 1933, Ivan Bunin, in 1958, Boris Pasternak, in 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov, in 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and in 1987, Joseph Brodsky.

Almost unknown in Russia Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, October 8, becoming the first Russian-language writer in 28 years to receive such an honorary award. Thus, Alexievich stood on a par with Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Sholokhov, Boris Pasternak and Ivan Bunin.

The selection of applicants, as always, took place in the strictest confidence, but it is assumed that among possible candidates Japanese writer Haruki Murakami was nominated for the award - he has not left the top lines of bookmakers' lists for many years, as well as Kenyan playwright Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.

“We welcome the decision of the Nobel Committee to award the 2015 Literature Prize to our compatriot, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. This first prize received by a citizen of our sovereign country will go down in the history of the formation of the Belarusian nation, society and state,” says the official statement of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.

When presenting the prize, the Nobel Committee called Alexievich's books "a monument to the courage and suffering of our time." “This is an outstanding writer, a great writer who created a new literary genre, going beyond ordinary journalism,” Sarah Danius, secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, commented on the decision of the Nobel Committee. Alexievich herself formulates main idea of his books like this: “I always want to understand how much personality there is in a person. And how to protect this person in a person.”

She believes that the prize was awarded to her not for any specific book, but for the whole creative activity. Alexievich said at a press conference in Minsk that the prize she received would allow her to continue working on her books without being distracted by everyday problems. “I always buy freedom with bonuses. I write books for a long time - 5-10 years.”

Svetlana Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948 in Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine, from where her family then moved to Belarus, where her parents taught at rural school. There, the future writer entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University in Minsk. After graduation, she worked in local newspapers and in the literary magazine Neman.

At the same time, Alexievich was preparing her first book, “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” about women front-line soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War. This book, like all subsequent works of the Belarusian writer, is compiled from numerous interviews with eyewitnesses with a minimum number of author's comments. For two years they refused to publish the book because of the unpleasant details of how victory in the war was achieved. The author was accused of pacifism and debunking the heroic image of Soviet women. “This book was created from what they told me: ‘Sveta, this doesn’t need to be published,’” says the writer. Now total circulation books reached 2 million copies.

In the same year, Alexievich’s second book, “The Last Witnesses,” was published, dedicated to women and children in the war. Critics called both works “a new discovery of military prose.” Four years later, “The Zinc Boys” was published, a documentary book about the Afghan War, which collected the memories of girlfriends, mothers and wives of Soviet soldiers who died during the conflict.

In the 2000s, the writer moved to Europe and lived in Italy, France, and Germany. Two years ago, Alexievich returned to Belarus to prepare her new book, Second Hand Time, about perestroika and the 90s. “The experience of the books that I wrote, the experience of my conversations with people shows that the layer of culture is very thin, it flies away very quickly. And if this only happened in war, in the camp. This is not required extreme situation, even in peaceful life, once - and a certain dehumanization occurs,” says Alexievich.

28 years later, a Russian-speaking writer received the Nobel Prize. Svetlana Alexievich wrote a lot about the war, and today this is especially important.

— Mikhail Khodorkovsky(@mich261213) October 8, 2015

Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize. Alas, but for hatred of Russia pic.twitter.com/tquL2KXXCe

And Gelman is right: the Russian world today received the Nobel Prize in Literature, but only the real one, and not all the trash in automation.

— Kirill Martynov(@kmartynov)

Farewell, unwashed Russia, hello, blessed Europe, which became even more blessed after receiving the Nobel Prize.

I am not a professional philologist, and I evaluate books solely from the point of view of like or dislike. Moreover, after presenting the Peace Prize to Barack Obama, my confidence in the Nobel Prize was, to put it mildly, undermined. Alexievich’s personality only confirmed these doubts.

So, the prize was awarded with the wording “for polyphonic creativity - a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” The last phrase - “in our time” - is, in my opinion, the most relevant. The fact is that Alexievich, the author of the "Chernobyl Prayer" and famous book“War does not have a woman’s face,” in last years became the source of many controversial statements about Russia, its history, people and political development.

A small selection of quotes:

About Victory and Emptiness

Millions burned in the fire of war, but millions also lie in the permafrost of the Gulag, and in the soil of our city parks and forests. Great, undoubtedly Great Victory immediately betrayed. It shielded us from Stalin's crimes. And now they are using the victory so that no one will guess what kind of emptiness we find ourselves in.

About joy after the return of Crimea

The rally for victory in Crimea brought together 20 thousand people with posters: “The Russian spirit is invincible!”, “We will not give Ukraine to America!”, “Ukraine, freedom, Putin.” Prayer services, priests, banners, pathetic speeches - some kind of archaic. There was a flurry of applause after the speech of one speaker: “Russian troops in Crimea have captured all the key strategic objects...” I looked around: rage and hatred on their faces.

About the Ukrainian conflict

How can you flood the country with blood, carry out the criminal annexation of Crimea and generally destroy this entire fragile post-war world? There is no excuse for this. I just came from Kyiv and was shocked by the faces and people I saw. People want a new life and they are determined to new life. And they will fight for it.

Impressive? But these are still flowers. Let's look at the writer's attitude towards Russians:

About the President's supporters

It's even scary to talk to people. All they keep repeating is “Crimea-nash”, “Donbass-nash” and “Odessa was unfairly given away”. And it's all different people. 86% of Putin's supporters are real figure. After all, many Russian people simply fell silent. They are scared, just like us, those who are around this huge Russia.

About the feeling of life

One Italian restaurateur posted a notice “We do not serve Russians.” This is a good metaphor. Today the world is again beginning to fear: what is there in this pit, in this abyss that has nuclear weapons, crazy geopolitical ideas and has no concept of international law. I live with a feeling of defeat.

About Russian people

We are dealing with a Russian man who has fought for almost 150 years over the past 200 years. And I never lived well. Human life it is worth nothing to him, and the concept of greatness is not that a person should live well, but that the state should be large and stuffed with missiles. In this vast post-Soviet space, especially in Russia and Belarus, where the people were first deceived for 70 years, then robbed for another 20 years, very aggressive people who are dangerous to the world have grown up.

About free life

Take a look at the Baltic states - life there today is completely different. It was necessary to consistently build that very new life that we talked so much about in the 90s. We so wanted a truly free life, to enter this common world. What now? Second hand is complete.

About new points of support for Russia

Well, certainly not Orthodoxy, autocracy and what have you... nationality? This is also a second-hand item. We need to look for these points together, and to do this we need to talk. How Polish elite spoke to its people, as the German elite spoke to its people after fascism. We have been silent for these 20 years.

Naturally, she could not ignore the personality of Vladimir Putin

About Putin and the church

But Putin seems to be here to stay. He threw people into such barbarism, such archaism, the Middle Ages. You know, this will last a long time. And the church is also involved in this... This is not our church. There is no church.

It is believed in society that the Nobel Prize is the main peace prize given for highest achievements. But isn't this a fallacy? Why was the Alexievich Prize given? Without a doubt, she is very talented, but, you see, if she had not acted against Russia, nothing like this would have happened.

And how can one expect anything objective from a prize established with money from the sale of explosives? Weapons only value other weapons. Prose Alexievich is the same weapon directed against Russia as the “peace fighter” Obama is against the whole world.

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Illustration copyright Getty Image caption Svetlana Alexievich became the 14th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was the Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich.

This is the first Nobel Prize in Belarus, where the works of this writer, writing in Russian, are not published.

The Swedish Academy of Literature, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, said Alexievich's work is characterized by "polyphonic prose that is a monument to suffering and heroism in our time."

"Using our unique creative method Alexievich's carefully composed collage of human voices deepens our understanding of an entire era," the Nobel Committee said.

Svetlana Alexievich was born in the Ukrainian city of Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), her father is Belarusian, her mother is Ukrainian. In 1972 she graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University, after which she worked in the regional newspaper in the city of Bereza, Brest Region, in the Selskaya Gazeta and in the Neman magazine.

Alexievich’s first book, “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face,” was written in 1983. The book was not published for two years; Soviet critics accused the writer of pacifism, naturalism and debunking the heroic image of Soviet women.

Since the beginning of 2000, Svetlana Alexievich lived in Italy, France and Germany.

The writer received more than a dozen prestigious literary awards. In 2006 she became a laureate National Award book critics in the United States, and in 2014 she was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters.

Alexievich was considered a contender for the Nobel Prize back in 2013. She became the 14th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Svetlana Alexievich's books, written in Russian, were not published in Belarus.

The Belarusian authorities were dissatisfied with the opposition views of the writer and her critical statements about President Alexander Lukashenko.

Today, after the announcement of the decision of the Nobel Committee, Alexievich told reporters that no one from the leadership of Belarus has yet congratulated her. However, she later received.

"Genre of human voices"

In 2007, Svetlana Alexievich gave an interview information portal“Afisha-Air”, in which she defined her literary genre as follows: “My genre is based on the fact that each person has his own guesses, which he was able to formulate before others. And if you put it all together, you get a novel of voices, a novel of time. One person cannot do this."

“I have been looking for a long time for a genre that would correspond to the way I see the world. The way my eye, my ear works... I tried myself,” writes Svetlana Alexievich on her website.

"I look for and listen to my books on the streets. Outside the window. In them real people they talk about the main events of their time - the war, the collapse of the socialist empire, Chernobyl, and all together they leave in words - the history of the country, general history. Old and new. And each - the story of his little human destiny“- this is how the writer describes her literary genre.

Among her most famous works"War Doesn't Have a Woman's Face", "Zinc Boys" and "Chernobyl Prayer".

"We quickly forget what we were like ten, twenty or fifty years ago. And sometimes we are ashamed, or we ourselves no longer believe that this is how it was with us. Art can lie, but a document does not deceive... Although a document is also someone's will, someone's passion... But I put together the world of my books from thousands of voices, destinies, pieces of our life and existence. I write each of my books for four to seven years, I meet and talk, I record 500-700 people. spans dozens of generations,” says the writer.

Russian writer Dmitry Bykov that awarding the Nobel Prize to Svetlana Alexievich is a great honor for Russian literature and confirmation of its high traditions, especially Russian literary journalism.

Farewell, unwashed Russia, hello, blessed Europe, which became even more blessed after receiving the Nobel Prize.

I am not a professional philologist, and I evaluate books solely from the point of view of like or dislike. Moreover, after presenting the Peace Prize to Barack Obama, my confidence in the Nobel Prize was, to put it mildly, undermined. Alekseevich’s personality only confirmed these doubts.

So, the prize was awarded with the wording “for polyphonic creativity - a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” The last phrase - “in our time” - is, in my opinion, the most relevant. The fact is that Alexievich, the author of “The Chernobyl Prayer” and the famous book “War Has No Woman’s Face,” has in recent years become the source of many controversial statements about Russia, its history, people and political development.

A small selection of quotes:

About Victory and Emptiness
Millions burned in the fire of war, but millions also lie in the permafrost of the Gulag, and in the soil of our city parks and forests. The great, undoubtedly Great Victory was immediately betrayed. It shielded us from Stalin's crimes. And now they are using the victory so that no one will guess what kind of emptiness we find ourselves in.
About joy after the return of Crimea
The rally for victory in Crimea brought together 20 thousand people with posters: “The Russian spirit is invincible!”, “We will not give Ukraine to America!”, “Ukraine, freedom, Putin.” Prayer services, priests, banners, pathetic speeches - some kind of archaic. There was a flurry of applause after the speech of one speaker: “Russian troops in Crimea have captured all the key strategic objects...” I looked around: rage and hatred on their faces....
About the Ukrainian conflict
How can you flood the country with blood, carry out the criminal annexation of Crimea and generally destroy this entire fragile post-war world? There is no excuse for this. I just came from Kyiv and was shocked by the faces and people I saw. People want a new life, and they are determined to have a new life. And they will fight for it.
Impressive? But these are still flowers. Let's look at the writer's attitude towards Russians:

About the President's supporters
It's even scary to talk to people. All they keep repeating is “Crimea-nash”, “Donbass-nash” and “Odessa was unfairly given away”. And these are all different people. 86% of Putin’s supporters is a real number. After all, many Russian people simply fell silent. They are scared, just like us, those who are around this huge Russia.

About the feeling of life
One Italian restaurateur posted a notice “We do not serve Russians.” This is a good metaphor. Today the world is again beginning to fear: what is there in this pit, in this abyss, which has nuclear weapons, crazy geopolitical ideas and has no concept of international law. I live with a feeling of defeat.
About Russian people
We are dealing with a Russian man who has fought for almost 150 years over the past 200 years. And I never lived well. Human life is worthless to him, and the concept of greatness is not that a person should live well, but that the state should be large and stuffed with missiles. In this vast post-Soviet space, especially in Russia and Belarus, where the people were first deceived for 70 years, then robbed for another 20 years, very aggressive people who are dangerous to the world have grown up.

About free life
Take a look at the Baltic states - life there today is completely different. It was necessary to consistently build that very new life that we talked so much about in the 90s. We so wanted a truly free life, to enter this common world. What now? Second hand is complete.

About new points of support for Russia
Well, certainly not Orthodoxy, autocracy and what have you... nationality? This is also a second-hand item. We need to look for these points together, and to do this we need to talk. How the Polish elite spoke to its people, how the German elite spoke to its people after fascism. We have been silent for these 20 years.
Naturally, she could not ignore the personality of Vladimir Putin

About Putin and the church
But Putin seems to be here to stay. He threw people into such barbarism, such archaism, the Middle Ages. You know, this will last a long time. And the church is also involved in this... This is not our church. There is no church.
Society believes that the Nobel Prize is the world's main prize, awarded for the highest achievements. But isn't this a fallacy? Why was the Alekseevich Prize given? Without a doubt, she is very talented, but, you see, if she had not acted against Russia, nothing like this would have happened.

And how can one expect anything objective from a prize established with money from the sale of explosives? Weapons only value other weapons. Proza Alekseevich is the same weapon directed against Russia as the “peace fighter” Obama is against the whole world.