2015 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Svetlana Alexievich. The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on 8 October 2015.

The citation

The citation reads: "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time".

The laureate

Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

Why it matters

The Belarusian writer builds books from the testimony of ordinary people, on subjects such as the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

The prize

The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.