Svetlana Alexievich is 78 years old as of October 2026. She was born on 31 May 1948.
Belarusian writer of Voices from Chernobyl and The Unwomanly Face of War, whose oral histories won the Nobel Prize
Did you know?She spent years interviewing hundreds of people to create a collective narrative of the Chernobyl disaster.
Quick facts
Date of birth31 May 1948
Age78
NationalityBelarusian
BirthplaceIvano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
Occupationwriter, journalist, historian
Editor's Take:
Svetlana Alexievich writes history in the voices of ordinary people. She records hundreds of interviews, then shapes them into books. The Unwomanly Face of War tells the stories of Soviet women in the Second World War. Chernobyl Prayer gathers the voices of the nuclear disaster. Second-Hand Time captures life after the Soviet collapse. She calls her method a "novel of voices". She won the Nobel Prize in 2015 and opposes the Lukashenko regime.
Key Milestones
1985: Unwomanly Face of War – book
1989: Zinky Boys – Afghan war
1997: Chernobyl Prayer – book
2013: Second-Hand Time – book
Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (born 31 May 1948) is a Belarusian author, investigative journalist, and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time".
