Svetlana Alexievich (Author) Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1948 and has
spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus with prolonged periods of
exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist she developed her own distinctive
non-fiction genre which brings together a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical
moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985) Last Witnesses (1985) Boys in Zinc
(1991) Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and Second-Hand Time (2013). She has won many international
awards including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'her polyphonic writings a monument
to suffering and courage in our time'.
