Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Her books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc, Chernobyl Prayer and Second-Hand Time. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for ‘her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.’