Belarus' Svetlana Alexievich wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich was on Thursday named the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature.

Announcing the prize, Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Sara Danius, called her writing "a monument to courage and suffering in our time", BBC reported.

The award is worth 8m kronor (691,000 pounds).

Alexievich, 67, is the 14th woman to win the prestigious prize.

Her works include "War's Unwomanly Face" (1988) book based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in the Second World War, the first in a "Voices of Utopia" cycle that depicted life in the Soviet Union "from the perspective of the individual", the academy said.

Her other works available in English include "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From a Forgotten War" (1992), "Voices From Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future" (1999) and "Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" (2005).