Miles Franklin prize removes novel from longlist after author apologises for plagiarism

Posted on June 10, 2022 by Admin

Exclusive: The Dogs by John Hughes withdrawn from $60,000 prize after novelist admits he used parts of nonfiction work of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich ‘without realising’

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Australia’s most prestigious books prize, the Miles Franklin literary award, has pulled The Dogs by John Hughes from its 2022 longlist, a day after Hughes apologised for plagiarising parts of the work of a Nobel laureate “without realising” in his acclaimed novel.

Following a Guardian Australia investigation that uncovered 58 similarities and instances of identical text between parts of Hughes’ 2021 novel The Dogs and the 2017 English translation of Svetlana Alexievich’s nonfiction The Unwomanly Face of War, Hughes apologised to Alexievich and her translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky “for using their words without acknowledgment”.

Belarus charges opposition leader with ‘undermining national security’

Posted on September 16, 2020 by Admin

Maria Kolesnikova could face up to five years in prison as president cracks down on opposition

Belarusian authorities have charged the opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova with “actions aimed at undermining national security”, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

The charge, announced by the country’s investigative committee, is the latest move in a crackdown on opposition leaders by the embattled president, Alexander Lukashenko, who has lost legitimacy among much of the population but retains the support of law enforcement agencies.

Belarus: we will not give up, says opposition leader after new arrests

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Admin

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya tells MEPs ‘intimidation didn’t work’ after two allies detained

The Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has vowed that the country’s movement for democratic change will not give up, despite the arrest of two allies working for a peaceful transition of power.

Speaking to the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee from exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, Tikhanovskaya said the authorities had responded with threats and intimidation to the coordination council, set up by the opposition to bring about non-violent change. But, she insisted: “The intimidation didn’t work. We will not relent. We demand to respect our basic rights. We demand all political prisoners be free.”

Svetlana Alexievich: ‘Most children caught up in war die early’

Posted on October 12, 2019 by Admin

The Nobel prize-winning author on using oral history to convey the horrors of war, her regard for Dostoevsky, and Greta Thunberg’s activism

Svetlana Alexievich gave a lecture last week commemorating the work of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Alexievich’s book Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories was published in June in the UK, more than three decades after it first appeared in the USSR to critical acclaim. It is based on interviews with a Soviet generation that experienced the second world war as children and has lived ever since with trauma. In 2015 Alexievich, now 71, won the Nobel prize for literature. The committee praised “her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. She lives in Minsk, Belarus, and is currently writing books about love and death.

Why are you in the UK?
I came because of Anna [Politkovskaya]. I loved and respected her so much. We met in 2005 at a prize ceremony in Oslo. There were many people there but Anna was somehow on her own, separate from the others. She was a person of extreme integrity bordering on fanaticism. We had a coffee, talked. There was one theme that united us: war. She was traumatised, at that point very close to a nervous breakdown, and full of pain and frustration. Anna was unhappy that she couldn’t explain the situation [in Chechnya]. She wasn’t able to make the west understand. She told me about the threats she was receiving. Her assassination [in 2006] came as a complete shock. I knew from our conversations that she was more or less prepared for this to happen. As a writer, I imagine what she was going through when she entered the lift of her apartment and the killer was there. It’s hard to imagine.