Svetlana Alexievich - Nobel Prize in Literature, 2015 (8 books)

SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH (b. 1948) is a Belarusian journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian and whose meticulously crafted works provide an uncompromising portrait of the social and political upheaval within the Soviet Union. She has garnered numerous literary awards, culminating in the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time".

Influenced by the oral tradition of Russian storytelling and the innovative literary reportage of Ales Adamovich and Artyom Borovik, Alexievich devised a hybrid literary genre that evolved as "the closest possible approximation to real life," in which human voices were allowed to speak for themselves about the main events of the age. Her body of work constitutes "a living history" of Soviet and post-Soviet culture. Her early works were deemed unpatriotic and seditious by authorities, and remained unpublished until the mid-1980s.

Her first book, THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR (1985), chronicled the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories during World War II. It was followed that same year by LAST WITNESSES, a collection of reminiscences of war as seen through the eyes of children. Based on detailed research and interviews, the books earned widespread critical recognition and established her reputation as an oral historian of collective identity.

ZINKY BOYS / BOYS IN ZINC (1989) exposed the hidden, undocumented futility of the Soviet war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties. (The title refers to the zinc coffins used by the military to return the Soviet dead.) Creating controversy when it was first published in the USSR -- where it was denounced by reviewers as "slanderous piece of fantasy" -- the book presents the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the devastating war and its lasting effects.

VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL / CHERNOBYL PRAYER (1997) confronted the devastating consequences of the Chernobyl disaster as told by witnesses and victims of the catastrophic nuclear power station accident. Alexievich experienced intimidation and harassment for her exposé; she was publicly denounced for "defamation" and "slander", and her opposition to the political regime in Belarus forced her into an extended period of self-imposed exile. The scope of her creative vision was enlarged with the publication of SECONDHAND TIME (2013), an examination of the legacy of communism in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union.


This is an update of an earlier torrent. The following texts are in PDF and/or ePUB format as indicated:

* Boys in Zinc (Penguin, 2017). Andrew Bromfield, trans. -- ePUB
* Chernobyl Prayer (Penguin Classics, 2016). Gunin and Tait, trans. -- ePUB
* Last Witnesses (Random House, 2019). Pevear and Volokhonsky, trans. -- ePUB
* Nobel Prize Lecture (Nobel Foundation, 2015). Jamey Gambrell, trans. -- PDF
* Secondhand Time (Random House, 2016). Bela Shayevich, trans. -- ePUB
* Unwomanly Face of War (Random House, 2017). Pevear/Volokhonsky, trans. -- ePUB
* Voices from Chernobyl (Picador, 2006). Keith Gessen, trans. -- PDF^ + ePUB
* Zinky Boys (Norton, 1992). J. and R. Whitby, trans. -- PDF^ + ePUB


== ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS ==

* At a Crossroads (Soviet Studies in Literature, 1987) -- PDF
* Between the Public and the Private, (Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2017) -- PDF
* Man Who Flew, The (NYRB, 19 Nov. 2015). Jamey Gambrell, trans. -- PDF
* "Russian Women Soldiers in WWII" (Womens Studies Quarterly, 1995) -- PDF
* Truth or Dare: An Interview (Index on Censorship, 2018) -- PDF


^ = PDF courtesy of @pharmakate

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