When Autocracies Have No Respect for the Nobel Prize
Journal: The Journal of Belarusian Studies
Year: 2016

As both the fi rst writer and the fi rst woman from Belarus to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich became a centre of public attention worldwide. While the fi rst tweets from the Nobel announcement room generated some confusion regarding this unknown writer from an unknown land -with about "10,000 reporters googling Svetlana Alexievich" (Brooks 2015) -the subsequent media coverage of the writer in such publications as The Guardian, The New Yorker, and Der Spiegel sketched