STOCKHOLM -- Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for chronicling the tragedies of the Soviet Union and its successor states through the voices of female soldiers, survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and former Soviet citizens dejected by the collapse of communism.
Alexievich, 67, used her reporting skills to merge journalism and literature, creating books that have been published in 19 countries, with at least five of them translated into English. She also has written three plays and screenplays for 21 documentary films.
She is the 14th woman to win the literature award. It was also the first time the Swedish Academy has honored journalistic work, according to its permanent secretary, Sara Danius.
Danius praised Alexievich as a great and innovative writer who has "mapped the soul" of the Soviet and post-Soviet people. The academy itself said Alexievich was chosen "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
"She is offering us new and interesting historical material. And she has developed a particular writing style as well, a new literary genre," Danius said. "She has said many times that 'I'm not interested in events, the history of events, I'm interested in the history of emotions.' And that's kept her busy for the past 40 years."
Alexievich supports the political opponents of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is up for re-election Sunday. Because of her criticism of the government she has periodically lived abroad -- including in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden -- but now lives in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.
Alexievich said she had not yet received any congratulations from Lukashenko, whom she has criticized for years.
"It'd be interesting to see what he's going to do in this situation," she said, speaking on the landing outside her apartment in a Soviet-era block.
The writers group English PEN called Alexievich "a tireless chronicler of voices which might not otherwise be heard," and said it hoped her victory would encourage the Belarus government to improve its human-rights record.
At a news conference Thursday afternoon in Minsk, the writer said Belarusian authorities simply pretend that she doesn't exist.
"They don't print my books here. I can't speak anywhere publicly. Belarusian television never invites me," she said.
But Alexievich said she is unfazed by messages of hate that she sometimes receives from conservative columnists in both Russia and Belarus.
"I think nobody loves the truth. I love the Russian people. I love the Belarusian people," she said.
Alexievich said she was at home ironing when she received the call Thursday from the academy with news that filled her both with joy and trepidation.
"How am I going to keep this up?" she said.
Speaking to Swedish broadcaster SVT, Alexievich said winning the award left her with "complicated" emotions.
"It immediately evokes such great names as [Ivan] Bunin, [Boris] Pasternak," she said, referring to Russian writers who have won the Nobel Prize for literature. "On the one hand, it's such a fantastic feeling. But it's also a bit disturbing."
She said the $960,000 in Nobel prize money will allow her to write more.
"I do only one thing: I buy freedom for myself. It takes me a long time to write my books, from five to 10 years," she said. "I have two ideas for new books, so I'm pleased that I will now have the freedom to work on them."
Alexievich was born on May 31, 1948, in the western Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk to a Belarusian father and a Ukrainian mother. Both parents worked as teachers. Alexievich later studied journalism in Belarus, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union. She worked at newspapers near the Polish border and in Minsk while collecting material for her books.
Her first book, War's Unwomanly Face, published in 1985, was based on the previously untold stories of women who had fought against Nazi Germany. It sold more than 2 million copies.
In 1989, she published Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, a book about the war that had been concealed from the Soviet public for 10 years.
Her 1993 book, Enchanted with Death, focused on attempted suicides resulting from the downfall of communism, as people who felt inseparable from socialist ideals were unable to accept a new world order.
In 1997, Alexievich published Voices from Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future. Released in English two years later, the book is not so much about the nuclear disaster as it was about the world after it: how people adapt to a new reality, living as if they had survived a nuclear war.
This year's Nobel announcements continue today with the Nobel Peace Prize and the economics award on Monday. The awards in medicine, physics and chemistry were announced earlier this week.
All awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
Information for this article was contributed by Yuras Karmanau and Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/09/2015