AWW23: A History of the Soul - Svetlana Alexievich & Mariana Katzarova

Chair: Louise Adler / Translator: Elena Mikhailik

Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Laureate, has been credited with the invention of a new literary genre: a “novel of voices“, a documentary prose in which individuals record their own personal and political histories. If Alexievich is writing “a history of the soul“, it’s a soul that is forged in crisis – be it the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Soviet war in Afghanistan or the collapse of the USSR. In 2018, she was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award from RAW in WAR, an organisation founded by human rights leader Mariana Katzarova. In this conversation, they discuss the imperative to document truth.

Event details: Sat 04 Mar, 9:30am on the East Stage