Belarusian writer wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich has won the Nobel Prize in literature for works that the prize judges called “a monument to suffering and courage”.

Alexievich, 67, used the skills of a journalist to create literature chronicling the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse: The Second World War, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and suicides that followed the death of Communism.

Her first novel, The Unwomanly Face Of The War, published in 1985 and based on the stories of women who had fought against the Nazis, sold more than 2m copies.