Which Belarusian journalist and author won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Which Belarusian journalist and author won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature? Svetlana Alexievich did. The Swedish Academy honored her for “polyphonic writings,” a phrase describing her documentary-style books built from many individual voices.

Alexievich was born in 1948 and became known for recording oral histories of Soviet and post-Soviet life. Her subjects include women who served in World War II, survivors of the Chernobyl disaster, and people shaped by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather than writing conventional fiction, she arranged interviews into literary collages.

She received the prize on December 10, 2015, becoming the first Belarusian national and the first journalist to win the Literature Nobel. A common mix-up is confusing her with Olga Tokarczuk, who won in 2018, or Herta Müller, who won in 2009. Her best-known books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Voices from Chernobyl, and Secondhand Time.