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NOBEL PRIZES 2015

NOBEL

‘It should be a big celebration in Belarus’

In two of Minsk's largest bookstores, local author Svetlana Alexievich's books were on prominent display after she won Sweden's Nobel Prize in Literature – but only in an edition published in Russian.

Published: 9 October 2015 06:00 CEST
'It should be a big celebration in Belarus'
Svetlana Alexievich after winning the Nobel Prize. Photo: AP Photo/Sergei Grits

While some customers and staff were hugely excited by her win, many told the AFP news agency that they had never heard of Alexievich despite the fact that she lives in the Belarusian capital.

None of her books, written in Russian and dealing with sensitive issues around the Second World War, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster are published in the country, which President Alexander Lukashenko rules with an iron fist.

In the Svetoch bookshop, sales assistant Anastasia pointed out Alexievich's works in the original Russian, which most people in ex-Soviet Belarus speak fluently.

“I just heard it on the news. It's excellent. We're glad, very glad, and proud,” she said.

“I've read 'Voices from Chernobyl', I really liked it. I haven't read the rest.”

While Alexievich's books are “fairly popular” and she is a Belarusian author, “not everyone knows her”, she acknowledged.

She said she was not aware of any hostility to Alexievich, however.

“If there is, it's just a few people. We leave political questions to the side.”

AS-IT-HAPPENED: The Local's blog from the announcement in Stockholm

Browsing classic Russian paperbacks, Alexei, a young man in his twenties, admitted: “That's the first time I've heard her name.”

A group of 14-year-old schoolgirls also looked blank when asked if they knew who Alexievich was.

But architect Zmitser Savelyeu rushed up to the shelves, sweat pouring down his face, saying that he had come specially to buy Alexievich's books to take to friends in Russia after hearing of her win. He disappointedly eyed the books, available only in a Russian edition.

“I heard literally an hour ago. It should be a big celebration in Belarus. It's very good news,” he said.

He attributed Alexievich's lack of recognition in her homeland to her prickly character and refusal to become part of the country's literary establishment.

“It's probably because she's famous but she hasn't won any literary prizes here, she's not appreciated enough here, maybe because of her principled stance in life. She's quite direct and harsh in her character, not everyone likes her.”


Some of Svetlana Alexievich's books in a Swedish bookshop. Photo: Marcus Ericsson/TT

In Minsk's Central bookstore, where a portrait of President Alexander Lukashenko hangs next to the words of the national anthem, assistants said they had never read her books, but lots of journalists had been seeking out her works on Thursday.

The Russian edition of her books was displayed in a stand decorated with a guitar.

“We've heard she's won,” said assistant Lyudmila. “Well, that's very good.”

On state television's most popular channel, Belarus 1, Alexievich's win was mentioned briefly on the early evening news summary, while Lukashenko was shown handing out state awards to military officers, engineers and women with large numbers of children.

One of the marginal candidates standing in presidential elections on Sunday that Lukashenko looks a certainty to win, 38-year-old Tatiana Korotkevich, congratulated Alexievich, however.

“We all believed and waited hopefully for this. I congratulate you and all of Belarus on this Nobel Prize,” Korotkevich wrote on Facebook.

NOBEL

US duo win Nobel for work on how heat and touch spark signals to the brain

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch.

Published: 4 October 2021 13:42 CEST
US duo win Nobel for work on how heat and touch spark signals to the brain
Thomas Perlmann (right), the Secretary of the Nobel Committee, stands next to a screen showing David Julius (L) and Ardem Patapoutian, winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

“The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world,” the Nobel jury said.

The pair’s research is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases and conditions, including chronic pain. Julius, who in 2019 won the $3-million Breakthrough Prize in life sciences, said he was stunned to receive the call from the Nobel committee early Monday.

“One never really expects that to happen …I thought it was a prank,” he told Swedish Radio.

The Nobel Foundation meanwhile posted a picture of Patapoutian next to his son Luca after hearing the happy news.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival, the Nobel Committee explained, and underpins our interaction with the world around us.

“In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.”

Prior to their discoveries, “our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system.”

Grocery store research

Julius, 65, was recognised for his research using capsaicin — a compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation — to identify which nerve sensors in the skin respond to heat.

He told Scientific American in 2019 that he got the idea to study chili peppers after a visit to the grocery store.  “I was looking at these shelves and shelves of basically chili peppers and extracts (hot sauce) and thinking, ‘This is such an important and such a fun problem to look at. I’ve really got to get serious about this’,” he said.

Patapoutian’s pioneering discovery was identifying the class of nerve sensors that respond to touch.

Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and the 12-year-younger Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

The pair were not among the frontrunners mentioned in the speculation ahead of the announcement.

Pioneers of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which paved the way for mRNA Covid vaccines, and immune system researchers had been widely tipped as favourites.

While the 2020 award was handed out in the midst of the pandemic, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

Media, Belarus opposition for Peace Prize?

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.

For the Peace Prize on Friday, media watchdogs such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been mentioned as possible winners, as has the Belarusian opposition spearheaded by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Also mentioned are climate campaigners such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement.

Meanwhile, for the Literature Prize on Thursday, Stockholm’s literary circles have been buzzing with the names of dozens of usual suspects.

The Swedish Academy has only chosen laureates from Europe and North America since 2012 when China’s Mo Yan won, raising speculation that it could choose to rectify that imbalance this year. A total of 95 of 117 literature laureates have come from Europe and North America.

While the names of the Nobel laureates are kept secret until the last minute, the Nobel Foundation has already announced that the glittering prize ceremony and banquet held in Stockholm in December for the science and literature laureates will not happen this year due to the pandemic.

Like last year, laureates will receive their awards in their home countries. A decision has yet to be made about the lavish Peace Prize ceremony held in Oslo on the same day.

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