STOCKHOLM (AP) — Latest news from the awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature.
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1:45 p.m.
Speaking by phone to Swedish broadcaster SVT, Svetlana Alexievich said winning the Nobel Prize in literature left her with a “complicated” feeling.
“It immediately evokes such great names as (Ivan) Bunin, (Boris) Pasternak, she said, referring to other Russian writers who have won the prize. “On the one hand, it’s such a fantastic feeling, but it’s also a bit disturbing.”
She said she was at home “doing chores, I was doing the ironing,” when the academy called her.
Asked what she was going to do with the 8 million Swedish kronor (about $960,000) prize money, she said: “I do only one thing: I buy freedom for myself. It takes me a long time to write my books, from five to 10 years.
“I have two ideas for new books so I’m pleased that I will now have the freedom to work on them.”
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1:35 p.m.
The new permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy recommends readers unfamiliar with this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in literature to start with her book “War’s Unwomanly Face.”
Sara Danius says the work by Svetlana Alexievich is a “a large, thick book that is based on hundreds of deep interviews with female participants in the Second World War, in the Red Army. She says it is an “absolutely brilliant book” that is makes for a captivating, but sometimes also dark read.
She says “it is about women who voluntarily headed to the front line, pretty much the same conditions as the men.”
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1:20 p.m.
The new permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy says this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in literature “has mapped the soul” of the Soviet and post-Soviet people.
Sara Danius says Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich has spent nearly 40 years studying the people of the former Soviet Union, but says her work isn’t only about history, it is also about “something eternal, a glimpse of eternity.”
Danius adds she is very pleased that Alexievich has won the prize, calling her work “absolutely brilliant.”
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1 p.m.
Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich has won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature.
The Swedish Academy cited the 67-year-old writer “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
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10:20 a.m.
The announcements of the science awards are over and now the Nobel Prize spotlight turns to literature.
The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, is expected to announce the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature at 1100 GMT in the academy’s Grand Hall in Stockholm’s Old Town district.
Many of the names rumored to be among the top candidates in previous years are back in the buzz for this year’s award, with betting firm Ladbrokes giving the lowest odds to Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, Haruki Murakami of Japan, Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse and American writer Joyce Carol Oates.
The secretive academy has dropped no hints before the announcement.
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