Svetlana Alexievich

Born 31 May 1948

Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.

Quotes

“What can art accomplish? The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.”
Speech at the Nobel Banquet 10 December 2015
“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.”
Voices from Chernobyl, p. 27
“Is there anything more frightening than people?”
Voices from Chernobyl, p. 60

Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0), chosen with AI.

Books by Svetlana Alexievich in order

Books by Svetlana Alexievich in the order they were published, from Last Witnesses (1985) to 100 tsytataŭ na Svabodze (2019).

If you like Svetlana Alexievich

Authors readers of Svetlana Alexievich often like, from our AI-written notes

Vasily GrossmanWrote about the Second World War and the Soviet state from the Soviet side, in novels such as Life and Fate. Readers of The Unwomanly Face of War often go to him next.
Primo LeviWrote testimony about survival and memory of atrocity in a plain, restrained style. Readers interested in witness writing often like both.
Ryszard KapuścińskiKnown for reportage from the Soviet bloc and the postcolonial world, combining close observation with an interest in ordinary lives.
Anna PolitkovskayaA Russian journalist who wrote about the Chechen wars and the Putin government. Readers of Alexievich's war and Soviet books often read her.
Adam HigginbothamWrote Midnight in Chernobyl, a narrative history of the disaster drawing on archives and interviews. Useful for readers who want a more conventional account of Chernobyl.