Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich came from a family of teachers; her parents were school teachers and her paternal grandfather was also a teacher. She herself took up tutoring in her early days.

During the dictatorial regime of Alexander Lukashenko, she was politically persecuted and this made her leave Belarus in 2000. The following decade she lived in Paris, Berlin and Gothenbur under the protection of the International Cities of Refuge Network. In 2011, she shifted back to Minsk.

Since 2003, Svetlana Alexievich has been a member of the advisory committee for the ‘Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage’.

Svetlana Alexievich was born on 31 May 1948, in Stanislaviv in Ukraine. Her father was an ex-service man and after his discharge from the army, both her parents worked as school teachers in Belarus.

During her school days, she is known to have written poetry and features for the school paper. After completing her school education, she worked as a reporter with a local newspaper in Narovl as experience in the field was a pre-requisite for higher studies during the time.

In 1967, Svetlana Alexievich enrolled in the Department of Journalism at the Minsk University and completed her graduation in 1972.

Post her graduation, Svetlana Alexievich was assigned work with a local newspaper at Beresa, and here she engaged in tutoring at the local school simultaneously. The next year she received an offer to work with a newspaper at Minsk.

In 1976, she got the opportunity to work with the magazine Neman in Minsk as a correspondent, and was soon promoted as the head of the non-fiction section.

During her career in journalism she has experimented in different genres like short stories, essays, news reportage and so on. Her writing style is considered unique; Svetlana Alexievich’s works include interviews with real people during the main events of that period. She believes this helps the reader to get a closer understanding of the reality along with preserving the originals.

In 1983, she finished the writing of her first book titled ‘The Unwomanly Face of the War’. However, it was not published until 1985 as she faced many hurdles with accusations in connection with the pacifism, naturalism, de-glorification of the heroic Soviet woman.

With the change in power in 1985, her first book was published in Moscow and Minsk and approximately 2 million copies were sold. She calls the book as a ‘novel-chorus’; as it is a collection of monologues of women speaking about many unknown aspects of the World War II.

Her book, ‘The Unwomanly Face of the War’, explores the unknown aspects of the Second World War that had never been related before. The book was hailed by the critics and was a big hit with more than two million copies sold.

Her book, ‘The Last Witnesses: 100 Unchildlike Stories' viewed war through the perspective of women and children; this was something that was not done before and opened up a new area of feelings and ideas