Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel laureate in Literature, is set to found a club for intellectuals in Minsk. It is expected to open in September.
“I believe it is meaningless to simply give money out, and I decided to [create] an intellectual club. There will be performances of intelligent thinkers who are actually well-known in Belarus, Russia, the whole world,” Alexievich said.
The meetings of the club will be held in Tut.by gallery which can hold around 250 people . “I will host and keep the club, because everything need to be paid. Anyone will be able to come, it will not be a closed club,” she promised.
Olga Sedakova, a Russian poet, novelist, translator, linguist and ethnographer, will be the first guest of the club. According to Svetlana Alexievich, Sedakova is the most interesting writer and deep thinker of our time.
“She explains why we [people in former Soviet republics] are at the tail end of our civilization, why the things that hit us happen, why a man who left prison camp, cannot be free and does not want to be free tomorrow,” Svetlana Alexievich said.
The writer also plans to invite Russian film director Alexander Sokurov who does not hide his pro-Ukrainian position speaking about the conflict in Donbas. At the meetings of the club everyone will be able to say whose lecture they would like to attend, whom we should invite to the club, the writer stressed.
By opening the club, its official website will have been launched.
