The Latest Breaking News from Svetlana Alexievich

Last year, all of literature’s big prizes went to small publishers. In a risk‑averse climate, edgy debuts and ‘tricky-to-sell’ foreign titles have found a home at the likes of Fitzcarraldo Editions and Sort Of Books

In June of last year, the Guardian revealed that John Hughes’ Miles Franklin-longlisted novel The Dogs contained material lifted from The Unwomanly Face of War, a book by Nobel Prize-winning Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich. When approached about this, Hughes apologised for the transgression, describing the plagiarism as unintentional.

During my sophomore year of college in 2010, I picked my major: Russian. I had been studying the language and was excited for the opportunity to read literature, learn about another part of the world and become bilingual. I updated my student profile on the university’s website and marched triumphantly…

This year’s winner shows the merit of the memoir form and marks a turning point for the literature prize