Prominently ignored
Svetlana Alexievich in Belarus
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Svetlana Alexievich comes from Belarus. Her works are known all over the world. And yet precisely in Belarus, Alexievich is not well regarded. For the Lukashenko regime, she was persona non grata, and a taboo subject in the media. Her books banned from being published in Belarus for fifteen years. Literary discussion of her works is marginal; today, not even a biography of her has been written. While Soviet nostalgists accuse her of defamation, Belarusian nationalists decry the fact that she writes in Russian. Alexievich falls between all stools. The Nobel Prize for Literature has had one effect: it has become harder to ignore her.
(Osteuropa 1-2/2018, pp. 149–164)