Prize-Winning Books You Can't Put Down
So many awards, so many amazing choices.
Here are our picks from this year's critically acclaimed honorees, including a
few surprises.
By Mark Athitakis
3 of 7
Voices from Chernobyl
By Svetlana Alexievich
256 pages;
Picador
The winner that surprised the world
The
Swedish Academy usually bestows the literature Nobel on poets and novelists,
not journalists. But Belarus' Svetlana Alexievich is an unusual journalist: She's
spent her career immersing herself in the most challenging stories about
Russia, from soldiers in Afghanistan to ordinary citizens who survived the
worst of World War II. Voices from Chernobyl, her best-known work outside her
homeland, is a gut-punch of a book that chronicles the survivors of the
catastrophic meltdown of the Soviet nuclear power plant in 1986. The book opens
with a woman who recalls losing her husband, literally piece by piece; others remember
harrowing evacuations and decry the government's failures to protect innocent
citizens. There is very little of Alexievich's own voice in the book, but the
way her subjects lay themselves bare reveals her generous and patient skills as
an interviewer. "I don't
want to talk about this," one woman tells her. "I won't." And then she does,
sharing a story of heartbreaking intimacy.
— Mark Athitakis
Published 11/23/2015