Writer
Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian writer. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. They have formed the basis for a dozen plays, and more than twenty of her scripts have been filmed as documentaries. She is the re- cipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Médicis Essai 2013 and the Best Book of the Year Prize 2013 by the French literary magazine Lire for "Time Second Hand", the Peace Prize by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association 2013, the Angelus Central Euro- pean Literature Award 2011 in Wroclaw/Poland for her book "War's Unwomanly Face", the Ryszard Kapuciński Award for literary reportage 2011 for "War's Unwomanly Face", the National Book Critics Circle Award, New York 2006 for "The Chernobyl Prayer"; Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize, Osnabrück, 2001; the Robert Geisendörfer Radio Play Prize, the German Academy of the Performing Arts, Berlin, 2000; the “Témoin du Monde,” Paris, 1999; “The Best Book on Politics of the Year,” Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bremen, 1998; the Andrej Sinjavskij Prize, Moscow, 1997; the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, Swedish PEN Club, Stockholm, 1996.
Svetlana Alexievich has created a literary non-fiction genre that is entirely her own. She writes “novels of voices.” She has developed this genre book after book, constantly honing the esthetic of her documentary prose, which is based on hundreds of interviews. Her skill at this allows her to intertwine the original voices of her subjects into an artful condensation of a panorama of souls.