Alexievitch - VILLA-GILLET // AIR // LES ASSISES INTERNATIONALES DU ROMAN 2012
 

Diversity of voices, diversity of languages : one week of events and readings in Lyon and in the Rhône-Alpes region.



Svetlana Alexievitch

© Margarita Kabakova

JOURNALIST

Belorussia

 

Svetlana Alexievitch was born in Ukraine in 1948. She studied journalism in Bylorussia, where her parents were teachers. Her first book, La guerre n’a pas un visage de femme, on the Second World War, was published in 1985. It was denounced as “unpatriotic, naturalistic, and degrading,” but was supported by Gorbatchev and became a best-seller. Each new book has been an event and a scandal: Les Cercueils de zinc (1989), on the war in Afghanistan, made her a name in France was adapted for the stage by Didier-Georges Gabily; Ensorcelés par la mort (1993), on the suicides that followed the break-up of the USSR; and La Supplication (1997) on Chernobyl. After living in Berlin for many years she has returned to Minsk.