Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in Ukraine, three years after the end of World War II. Shortly afterwards, her father moved the family back to his homeland, Belarus, where Alexievich would grow up to become one of the country’s most celebrated writers, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. These childhood years in a small Belarusian village, she has recalled, included many nights listening to adults tell stories about the war: “In the evening, sitting on benches, people talked, and we, the children, listened, of course…this made a big impression on me. A much bigger impression than books.” …read more
Source: The New Republic
