Svetlana Alexievich: A lot changed during the last 20, 30 years — music, art. Why shouldn’t literature change as well? We cannot have the same literature as Tolstoy wrote. My parents were teachers in a village, and I spent my whole childhood in a village. And what I heard from simple women on the street, their stories were more amazing than any books I read. Their stories were horrifying, interesting, and very different. It made a big impression on me and had a great influence on what I wrote because some things were so much stronger and heavier than anything I read before. I feel very sad that many conversations between people on the street, between parents and children, they are disappearing. But I feel it’s also part of literature.