In an interview posted on the press’s website, Ms. Alexievich said her technique of blending journalism and literature was inspired by the Russian tradition of oral storytelling. “I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me,” she said. “Each person offers a text of his or her own.”ADDED: What's really interesting here is that the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded for writing nonfiction, though it's not purely nonfiction. It's a "mix of nonfiction and fiction."
“By means of her extraordinary method — a carefully composed collage of human voices — Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era,” the academy said.
I want to know which purely nonfiction writers have won!
While the Nobel committee has occasionally awarded the prize to nonfiction writers, including Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill, it has been decades since a journalist or historian has won. Some prominent writers, among them the New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, have called for the Nobel judges to recognize nonfiction as a worthy art form.
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“Each person offers a text of his or her own.”
She's tone-deaf, whatever else she is.
“I decided to collect the voices from the street, the material lying about around me”
Like the Belarus version of man-on-the-street-interviews asking people if they agree with Dems' plans to abolish the First Amendment, or whether clock boy's clock looks like a clock or a bomb? Those sorts of "voices"? Should be a fun read.
Passed over Ta-Nehisi Coates? Racists!
Voices from Chernobyl is a great book.
I think there is an error in your headline. Isn't this the Nobel Peace Prize?
"one of the first whose work was mainly nonfiction."
So, the second? The third? The eighth? Or did she win as a collective?
No Nobel prize for the article writer.
Western media turned Chernobyl into an environmental green morality lesson and Russia denies that it was ever important. She was able to tell the story that neither side would tell. It was a big achievement. If you’re interested Russia and Ukraine, the book provides good insights.
It’s interesting to note that the two worst nuclear accidents in history have occurred in Russia. Chernobyl and Chelyabinsk. Both disasters were of epic proportions. Incompetent management, massive cover-up, lives lost and heroism. Chelyabinsk occurred in 1957. Gary Powers was on a surveillance mission of the site in 1960 when he got shot down. The existence of that disaster was denied until after the fall of the Soviet Union. It takes courage for a Russian to write about events that Putin and his gang don’t like.
She sounds like a worthy person and worthy winner of the prize. The write up in the Times, however, doesn't put me in a big hurry to read her books.......I'm saddened to see that a Nobel Prize winner chose to wear such dowdy clothes for her picture in the Times. My opinion of her can't but help to be diminished.
The second Nobel Prize for Literature (1902) went to a writer of non-fiction: Theodor Mommsen, primarily for his three-volume History of Rome - published 1854-56 (!) and unfinished: there was a lot more Roman history to cover. He also published 1500 articles and edited multiple volumes of Roman inscriptions. A great scholar and historian, and very different from the novelists and poets who almost always win.
For a few weeks when I went to bed at night, I was in the habit of listening to Bertrand Russell's BBC radio lectures from the '50's titled "Living in an Atomic Age". As lectures go, they were an excellent sleep aid, and I still use them. One night I stayed awake and listened to one right through. I didn't find his ideas or thinking extraordinary- pretty standard academic leftism. Lots of Benevolent Statism and One World utopia talk. I have his book Marriage & Morals. Here's an excerpt:
"There is another powerful force which is working in the direction of the elimination of the father, and this is the desire of women for economic independence...The whole motive for the non-employment of married women is a masculine desire to preserve economic power over them."
Theodor Mommsen's History of Rome (typically organized into four volumes in the English versions) included only the Republic period. (Though a big volume of “his” writing covering the Imperial period has been assembled from the notes of his students. Mommsen also did a [popularly accessible] book on the provinces of the Empire.) Following is my favorite quote from the original work:
A wondrous charm attaches to the name of the Epirot [King Pyrrhus] — a peculiar sympathy, evoked certainly in some degree by his chivalrous and amiable character, but still more by the circumstance that he was the first Greek that met the Romans in battle. With him began those direct relations between Rome and Hellas, on which the whole subsequent development of ancient, and an essential part of modern, civilization are based. The struggle between phalanxes and cohorts, between a mercenary army and a militia, between military monarchy and senatorial government, between individual talent and national vigour — this struggle between Rome and Hellenism was first fought out in the battles between Pyrrhus and the Roman generals; and though the defeated party often afterwards appealed anew to the arbitration of arms, every succeeding day of battle simply confirmed the decision.
But while the Greeks were beaten in the battlefield as well as in the senate-hall, their superiority was none the less decided on every other field of rivalry than that of politics; and these very struggles already betokened that the victory of Rome over the Hellenes would be different from her victories over Gauls and Phoenicians, and that the charm of Aphrodite only begins to work when the lance is broken and the helmet and shield are laid aside.
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