WRITER

Svetlana Alexievich

1948 - Today

Photo of Svetlana Alexievich

Icon of person Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (born 31 May 1948) is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Svetlana Alexievich has received more than 1,592,806 page views. Her biography is available in 96 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 92 in 2019). Svetlana Alexievich is the 177th most popular writer (up from 189th in 2019), the 17th most popular biography from Ukraine and the 4th most popular Ukrainian Writer.

Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction writer. She is most famous for her book The Unwomanly Face of War, which is a collection of interviews with women who served in the Soviet Army during World War II.

Memorability Metrics

  • 1.6M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 73.17

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 96

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 13.84

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.43

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The Unwomanly Face of War
Voces de Chernóbil
Voices of Chernobyl
Belarus
This is not a book about Chernobyl, but about the world it has left us. Alexievich spent three years interviewing dozens of survivors, victims and witnesses. This is their testimony, their voices, and they are unforgettable.'
Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War
History
From 1979 to 1989 a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties - and the youth and humanity of many tens of thousands more. In Zinky Boys journalist Svetlana Alexievich gives voice to the tragic history of the Afghanistan War. What emerges is a story that is shocking in its brutality and revelatory in its similarities to the American experience in Vietnam - a resemblance that Larry Heinemann describes movingly in his introduction to the book, providing American readers with an often uncomfortably intimate connection to a war that may have seemed very remote to us. The Soviet dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins (hence the term "Zinky Boys"), while the state denied the very existence of the conflict; even today the radically altered Soviet society continues to reject the memory of the "Soviet Vietnam". Creating controversy and outrage when it was first published in the USSR - it was called by reviewers there a "slanderous piece of fantasy" and part of a "hysterical chorus of malign attacks" - Zinky Boys presents the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its lasting effects. Svetlana Alexievich has snatched from the memory hole the truth of the Afghanistan War: the beauty of the country and the savage Army bullying, the killing and the mutilation, the profusion of Western goods, the shame and shattered lives of returned veterans. Zinky Boys offers a unique, harrowing, and unforgettably powerful insight into the realities of war and the turbulence of Soviet life today.
Los muchachos de zinc
La guerra no tiene rostro de mujer
Цинковые мальчики
Military Journalism, Journalism, Military, Military History
Последние свидетели
Children, Personal narratives, Russian, Russian Personal narratives
Зачарованные смертью
Social conditions, Suicidal behavior, Suicide
Чернобыльская молитва
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986, Environmental aspects, Environmental aspects of Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986
Consecuencias sobre las personas que les tocó vivir una nueva realidad que todavía existe pero que aún no se ha comprendido. Aquellos que sufrieron Chernóbil son los supervivientes de una Tercera Guerra Mundial nuclear. Según Alexievich, en este mundo hostil ?todo parece completamente normal, el mal se esconde bajo una nueva máscara, y uno no es capaz de verlo, oírlo, tocarlo, ni olerlo. Cualquier cosa puede matarte... el agua, la tierra, una manzana, la lluvia. Nuestro diccionario está obsoleto. Todavía no existen palabras, ni sentimientos, para describir esto?. Voces de Chernóbil recibió en marzo de 2006 el premio del Círculo de Críticos de Estados Unidos en reconocimiento a la fuerza narrativa de Alexievich y a la importancia de las historias que cuenta. Esta edición en castellano incluye además testimonios inéditos hasta la fecha, incorporados por la autora a la que es la última versión de la obra elaborada por ella con motivo del XX aniversario de la catástrofe
У войны не женское лицо
Female Participation, Participation, Female, Personal narratives, Russian
«У войны́ не же́нское лицо́» — документально-очерковая книга белорусской писательницы, лауреата Нобелевской премии по литературе 2015 года Светланы Алексиевич. В этой книге собраны рассказы женщин, участвовавших в Великой Отечественной войне.
Время сэконд хэнд
Social conditions, Post-communism, Biography
"From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals"-- "Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style of oral history, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of Communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals. When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize in Literature, they praised her 'polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,' and cited her for inventing 'a new kind of literary genre.' Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, added that her work comprises 'a history of emotions--a history of the soul'"--

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Svetlana Alexievich ranks 177 out of 7,302Before her are Karel Čapek, Pliny the Younger, François-René de Chateaubriand, Wisława Szymborska, Taras Shevchenko, and Luigi Pirandello. After her are J. D. Salinger, Osamu Dazai, André Breton, Nizami Ganjavi, John Steinbeck, and Aldous Huxley.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1948, Svetlana Alexievich ranks 6Before her are Al Gore, Charles, Prince of Wales, Jean Reno, Gérard Depardieu, and Terry Pratchett. After her are Eckhart Tolle, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cat Stevens, Samuel L. Jackson, Hassan Rouhani, and Sauli Niinistö.

Others Born in 1948

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In Ukraine

Among people born in Ukraine, Svetlana Alexievich ranks 17 out of 1,365Before her are Joseph Conrad (1857), Hafsa Sultan (1479), Viktor Yanukovych (1950), Ilya Repin (1844), Taras Shevchenko (1814), and Helena Blavatsky (1831). After her are Stanisław Lem (1921), Sviatoslav I of Kiev (942), Mikhail Bulgakov (1891), Stanisław Leszczyński (1677), Stefania Turkewich (1898), and Anna Akhmatova (1889).

Among WRITERS In Ukraine

Among writers born in Ukraine, Svetlana Alexievich ranks 4Before her are Nikolai Gogol (1809), Joseph Conrad (1857), and Taras Shevchenko (1814). After her are Stanisław Lem (1921), Mikhail Bulgakov (1891), Anna Akhmatova (1889), Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836), Joseph Roth (1894), Sholem Aleichem (1859), Vasily Grossman (1905), and Lesya Ukrainka (1871).