Svetlana Alexievich gets Nobel Literature prize

Belarusian writer and journalist Sviatlana Alexievich has won this year's Nobel Literature prize for "her polyphonic works, a monument to suffering and courage of our time."

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The prize is $953 000.

Sviatlana Alexievich was born in 1948. She became famous for her debut novel War's Unwomanly Face in 1983. Her other best known works in English translation included Voices from Chernobyl, an oral history of the nuclear catastrophe; and Boys in Zink, a collection of first-hand accounts from the Soviet-Afghan war.