The Literature in the Journalism of Nobel Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich

For the first time the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded for literary journalism as revealed in the work of Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich. Fundamentally, her approach has been to juxtapose the everyday details of life against the secular mythologies of the state. Moreover, she makes it clear that the intention of her journalism is to be literary. As such, she is part of a larger Russian tradition, as well as a tradition practiced in the Soviet Union and other communist countries during the Cold War. The following is excerpted and adapted from the author's forthcoming book, Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience, to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2016. Permission to reprint passages from the volume is gratefully acknowledged.