FOR THE PAST 35 years, Svetlana Alexievich has traversed the former Soviet Union, Dictaphone in hand, recording thousands of interviews with ordinary people—from construction workers in Siberia to helicopter pilots in Ukraine. Alexievich’s methods have earned her comparisons to American historians Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn, but her accomplishments are in a category of their own: In 2015, the 68-year-old journalist became the first primarily nonfiction writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature since Winston Churchill did it in 1953.
EVERYBODY’S A CRITIC: Censors blocked Alexievich’s first book for two years, complaining that the war she described was horrible and that she did not have any heroes.
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So far, her output consists of five books she calls The History of the Red Man. The latest installment, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, covers the breakup of the USSR and the chaotic transition that ensued. It took Alexievich, who was born in Ukraine but lived most of her life in Belarus, 10 years to finish. The book, which was originally published in Russian in 2013, has been translated into English and was released in the U.S. and the U.K. in May. It’s being hailed as Alexievich’s masterpiece—not only for what it says about the fall of the Soviet Union but for what it suggests about the future of Russia and its former satellites.