On 31 May 1948, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich was born — winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the first recipient of the award in the history of independent Belarus and the first Russian-language writer to receive the Nobel since 1987 (after Joseph Brodsky). After the 2020 elections, Alexievich joined the presidium of the Coordination Council, was questioned by investigators — and left for Germany in September.

Nobel Prize and books

The Academy awarded the prize “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Alexievich writes artistic non-fiction in Russian: her books are built on interviews with people who lived through war, Chernobyl, and the collapse of the USSR.

Her best-known works include The Unwomanly Face of War, Voices from Chernobyl, and Secondhand Time. She calls a cycle of six books a “chronicle of the Great Utopia.” According to Belprauda, the writer is working on a book about the 2020 protests in Belarus.

2020: Coordination Council and interrogation

After the 2020 presidential election, Alexievich joined the presidium of the Coordination Council — a body created to help overcome the political crisis. On 26 August 2020, she was summoned for questioning at the Investigative Committee in a criminal case over the council’s creation.

The day before, the writer said:

“I am going completely calmly; I do not feel guilty. Everything we did is entirely lawful. Our only goal was to unite society. There is no talk of any coup.”

At the interrogation she refused to testify against herself and spent about 40 minutes in the Investigative Committee building. Alexievich remained the last presidium member who was neither detained nor forced to leave the country.

Departure for Germany

On 28 September 2020, Alexievich flew to Germany. According to her aide, the trip was related to medical treatment and work plans — a book fair in Sweden and an award ceremony in Italy. The Coordination Council said the departure had been planned for a long time but was postponed because of the pandemic.

At first there was talk of returning within a month, but since then the writer has lived in Germany. According to Belprauda, she heads the Belarusian PEN Centre and continues her public work from exile.

Who Alexievich is today

She was born in Ivano-Frankivsk (then Stanislav), grew up in Belarus in a family of teachers, graduated from the journalism faculty of Belarusian State University, and worked as a journalist and editor. For many years she criticized Lukashenko’s regime; her books went unpublished in Belarus for years.

On 31 May 2026, Svetlana Alexievich turns 78. She remains one of the world’s best-known Belarusian intellectuals — a writer whose “voices” from the past sound especially relevant against new political upheaval in the region.