Svetlana Alexievich a Belarusian Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Svetlana Alexievich, 67 year old Belarusian investigative journalist, ornithologist and prose writer has won the Nobel Laureate Prize for Literature, 2015. She is the 14th women in the history of the competition to win the prize. Her writing about the Soviet Union and its collapse, including the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster won her the prize.

She has written short stories, essays and reportage and was heavily influenced by her fellow Belorusian writer Ales Adamovich. Some of her books include 'The Chernobyl Prayer,' The War's Unwomanly Face,''Last Witness' and 'Ziky Boys'Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, praised the author for developing “a new kind of literary genre” based on real interviews.

Nobel judges hailed her mixture of skills - as a journalist, playwright and screenwriter - and the chair of the Swedish Academy called her writing “a monument to suffering and courage

The winner has been a surprise as the prize was keenly contested by Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, Kenyan novelist, Ngugui Wa Thiongo, Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse and American writers Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth.