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'Voices From Chernobyl' Author Svetlana Alexievich Wins Lit Nobel (theguardian.com)
Lawrence Bottorff writes: The author of Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, Svetlana Alexievich, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's somewhat surprising, since she is an investigative journalist and not a fiction writer/novelist. And yet her "novels in voices" style, as the Nobel jurists believe, clearly has a literary impact. Here's what a review from the Journal of Nuclear Medicine says about Voices from Chernobyl:
"Alexievich was a journalist living in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, at the time of the Chernobyl accident. Instead of choosing the usual approach of trying to quantify a disaster in terms of losses and displacement, the author chose instead to interview more than 500 eyewitnesses over a span of 10 years. ... It tells us about the psychologic and personal tragedy of the modern-day nuclear disaster. It is about the experiences of individuals and how the disaster affected their lives."
Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded based on "lifetime work" rather than an individual book, Voices... is her best-known and most celebrated work.
"Alexievich was a journalist living in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, at the time of the Chernobyl accident. Instead of choosing the usual approach of trying to quantify a disaster in terms of losses and displacement, the author chose instead to interview more than 500 eyewitnesses over a span of 10 years. ... It tells us about the psychologic and personal tragedy of the modern-day nuclear disaster. It is about the experiences of individuals and how the disaster affected their lives."
Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded based on "lifetime work" rather than an individual book, Voices... is her best-known and most celebrated work.
...I don't see it wrong to consider the duration of the research effort plus the historical record it leaves (ie, so future generations have a harder time making contrary claims in hindsight) s not being valid criteria for a lifetime body of work. Indeed, after the period of speculative hysteria in the news is over, immediate documentation is the best way to ensure that the legacy and history is realistically preserved. The era of photography began to help this (though is subject to manipulation) but getting the narrative of the participants recorded before they have an opportunity to retroactively change their opinions too much is helpful in honestly understanding what happened.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
> Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded based on "lifetime work" rather than an individual book,
> Voices... is her best-known and most celebrated work.
According to most of the articles I've read (in the last 15 minutes), her most popular and acclaimed book is War’s Unwomanly Face which is an oral history of Russian woman who fought in WWII. It sold more than 2 million copies.
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I've actually read the "Voices of Chernobyl" long time ago. It's over-emotional crap with very little actual facts and some outright lies: Alexievich's husband was treated in the Moscow radiological military hospital by qualified staff (not by some fearful nurses), being a bone marrow donor does not lead to a disability and it's certainly not performed in the same operating room on a table next to the bone marrow recipient (yet her memoirs graphically describe it).
Shame on the Nobel committee.
Nobel Prize is sometimes given to stir up some local politics. While, I am sure, the writer is a talented intellectual, many times Noble Prize committee is choosing candidates to rattle the cages for the authoritarians and totalitarians in the recipients' original countries. Do not seek absolute and indisputable merits when researching the contributions of Nobel Prize winners.
It is a political tool.
It is also an investment to the weak and unorganized opposition to the moderate European dictator of Republic of Belaruss Mr. Lukashenko.
Writer Alexievich is know for the critics of the current regime in Belarus. Wise gentlemen decided to invest into visibility of the future leaders and intelectuals early...
When will Steven King get his nobel prize in literature? The guy has been producing some of the best fiction ever and wasn't found dead in his Main home this morning. I'm sure everybody in the slashdot community misses his Nobel prize. Maybe it's because he was truly an American icon?
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Oh for fuck's sake.
Can a woman not write a book about women without the "anti-SJW" crowd whining at length? You haven't even read the damn thing, yet here you are crying about it. What the fuck is so "feminist" (boo! hiss!) about a work documenting women who fought in a war? It's history, and the type of history anyone interested in the subject likely appreciates. She's a 67-year-old Ukrainian, not one of the 14-year-old Tumblr users who you lot think are ruining the world.
You're becoming the assholes who leave comments on non-political articles whining about "Obummer." Christ.
She has won the Nobel price because she risked her freedom to write journalist investigation with a high quality in literature. She didn't only make yet another propaganda documentary about Chernobyl, but she actually tried to describe the life of regular people in late USSR/Comobol countries and there after.
She writes about how it was to life in those Communist countries, and about the failure to reform to an open democratic society. She is from the last remaining dictatorship in Europe, Minsk, and her books are banned. And you probably know what happens with these kind of independent journalist in Russia who dare to say something else than state propaganda.
Her work is the only work that has an alternative view on the USSR before and after and is of high quality. Enough to win prices. She tries to be neutral, but of course, nobody is neutral because she already does something illegal in her country: using free speech and writing books that are not allowed by the government. That doesn't mean her work is worthless or anti USSR, or anti capitalism, or anti socialism or feminist or anti capitalistic. She is a documenter and does a great job at describing how life was in those countries.
The reason why Chernobyl was so important was the time when it happened. It was during Gorbachev reform policies that promised more openess and freedom of press. Normally such an event would not be publicized and news would be boycotted. Because of the change of policies 'journalists' who were still used to being propaganda writers could all of the sudden describe what happened, the heroes but also the horrors, the errors, those responsible, etc...
They could even start asking critical questions. Although it was all uneasy at that time, both for the journalists and the politicians, it was the start of a critical public opinion that would lead to the fall of the USSR. A pretty surprising fall without revolution, without competing warlords, without war, especially for such a super power with such an extensive system to control an entire society (KGB, Army, propaganda...).
There books are really interesting to read and are well written if you like to read about how life is in some other regime.