Belarusian journalist and writer Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel prize in literature.

Swedish Academy stated that her work was a “monument to suffering and courage in our time”.

Alexievich was born on the 31 May 1948 in the Ukrainian town Ivano-Frankovsk. Her father is Belarusian and her mother is Ukrainian.

She has written short stories, essays and reportage, but also created literature chronicling the great tragedies of the Soviet Union and its collapse.

Her first novel, The Unwomanly Face of the War, published in 1985 and based on the previously untold stories of women who had fought against the Nazi Germans, sold more than 2 million copies.

Her books have been published in 19 countries and she has also written three plays and the screenplays for 21 documentary films.