Belarus: Svetlana Alexievitch, Nobel Prize for Literature and figure of protest

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2 min

Symbol of the pressure which increases on the protest movement in Belarus, the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Svetlana Alexievitch, was summoned Wednesday August 26 by the investigators, because member of the "Coordination Council" formed by the opposition to organize the transition of power. The message of the Alexander Lukashenko clan is clear: no one will be spared, including the most famous Belarusian.

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“  Now the regime will have to listen to me.  This is what the novelist Svetlana Alexievitch had said in Sweden during the presentation of her Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. Five years later, she accuses the Belarusian authorities of having started "  a war against her people  ". It was a few days before joining the Opposition Coordination Committee .

Between documentary and literature

The one who became the fourteenth woman, in more than a century, to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, is a former journalist. His work is often perceived as being at the border between documentary and literature. Svetlana Alexievitch wrote her books for several years, based on testimonies. The very first, The War Does Not Have a Woman's Face , is based on interviews with hundreds of women in World War II. As a result, she was accused of "  breaking the heroic image of the Soviet woman  ", even though Mikhaeil Gorbachev defended her.

The book was not published until 1985 and immediately made her famous in the Soviet Union and abroad. Svetlana Alexievitch is also interested in the war in Afghanistan. His most noticed work, La supplication , is the fruit of 10 years of work on the Chernobyl disaster and its consequences. A book banned in Belarus, where the subject is taboo.

► To read also: Svetlana Alexievitch: "I wanted to tell the temptation of big ideas"

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• Belarus
• Nobel prize
• Alexander Lukashenko
• Literature
• Literary awards

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