Svetlana Alexievich, The Art of Oral History No. 1
Advertisement The Paris Review Subscribe Svetlana Alexievich , The Art of Oral History No. 1 Interviewed by Elena Kostyuchenko Issue 257, Fall 2026 In her apartment in Berlin, 2026. © Lena Kashirsky. Svetlana Alexievich asked me as many questions as I asked her. At intervals, she would propose that we pause so she could record me; in one of our final sessions, when a photographer, Lena Kashirsky, came to take her picture, Alexievich insisted that she stay to talk. She wanted to know what books we were reading, whether a revolution could be bloodless, what music teenagers were listening to these days in Moscow, whether I thought Putin was a happy person. She also asked about love—what it is, and why we believed it appears or disappears. She stopped using a handheld recorder years ago; the app on her iPhone works fine. Alexievich was sixty-seven when she received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015, “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” B...