Mukunda Rama Rao is many in one: to begin with a computer wizard he rendered distinctive service to Indian Railways. He is a poet in Telugu who won acclaim for his poem valasa poyina mandasam which also is the title of his book of poetry. A little later became a Nobel enthusiast since 2013 when he brought out 1901 nundi nobel kavitvam, kavula jeevita-kavitva visheshaalu. This is unique and the very first of its kind in Telugu. Fourteen Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2015, their lives and distinctive writing are all provided with meticulous care in this book. For one thing, it is an arduous task getting English translations of the poems of world-renowned poets. Then this author translated poems from English of poems in European and other languages also. It is a stupendous effort of translating the poems into Telugu, really a labour of poetic love and admiration. In Dec 2015 thanks to Asmita-Resource Centre For Woman, Hyderabad his 1901 nundi sahityam lo Nobel mahiLalu, Female Nobel Laureates in Literature from 1901 to 1915. In 2016 he brought out another extraordinary ordinary book adei gaali-prapanchedesaala kavitvam – nepathyam, which rendered into English means That Very Breeze -- World Countries’ Poetry – Background. This is edited by litterateurs K B Gopalam and Dr.Lanka Siva Prasad and Emesco published it.

First, the book about female winners of the Nobel decoration:

In 1901, Selma Lagerlöf, poet from Sweden, was the very first woman to receive the Nobel Prize. Born in Sweden she became a graduate in 1885 in spite of very great sufferings. She became a friend of a writer Sophy and the two became inseparable

like Juno’s swans. The two travelled all over Sweden and wrote a book for little children on Sweden’s history based on geography which was prescribed later as a text book for all public schools in Sweden. Their story ‘Rattrap’ was prescribed as a lesson even in our country by the NCERT. World War agitated and disturbed her in such a way that she stopped writing. Books written by her about her childhood memories in 1930 and her diary in 1932 display great talent. In 1925 she wrote the novel Lowenskoldskaringen and after three years came out Treasure in 1904, The Girl from Marsh Croft and in 1913, the Emperor of Portugallia. Later twenty more books of this writer came out. She got her honorary doctorate and she was the first lady to be elected as a member of the Swedish Academy. Thoughtful Selma bought with a part of her prize money their ancestral house in Morbaka. In 1920 with the demise of her friend, she wrote about her memories and dedicated her Christian stories to a friend and spent the money she got for them and dedicated her books to her beloved friend. She spent the money she got on the sale of her books for the sufferers of Nazi Germany. But the Nazis proscribed her works. Then she helped another poet, Nelly Sachs from being sent to the Nazi Camps. She gave away the gold medal she got along with the Nobel Prize in charity.

She died of brain haemorrhage. For fifty years her letters to Sophie Elko and Walberg Oleander which reveal her intimacy with them were not made public. She worked all her life writing about Women’s Movements and arguing and writing for peace prolifically with creativeness and magical reality. She worked all her life writing about women’s movements and arguing for peace. She created stories with depth, which are read even today.

Grazia Deledda got the Nobel Prize in 1927 since none got the prize for literature in 1926. Nobel Committee members considered her the best of writers in Sardinia, the biggest island in Mid West, with clarity and sensitivity. She came from a middle class family. Her parents were Giovanni Antony Deledda and Francesca Kombis in a Bronze Time village. Her father was the Mayor who wrote poetry. Their home was situated on a high hill and gave accommodation for friends. But her sister died unable to bear the cold on the hill. Later they went to Sardinia’s capital Kinglier. Grazia’s first published story brought problems. In the story Ela the beautiful girl pushed her sister’s lover, who was a thief and spent years stealing for a living, down the hill. The whole village revolted against the writer. Then she wrote on a pseudonym. None wrote favourably about the family. In 1892 her father died.

She was taught by a preacher. People in those days thought that high education for girls was not necessary. At fifteen she wrote the story ‘Flower of Sardinia’. Writing at least four pages a day, she produced 44 books.

Though she shifted to Rome, she could not give up writing about hard living. Among the people who came to congratulate her on receiving the Nobel Prize there was Eric Excel and Karl Fakt too. Her Nobel speech was the shortest. Even Bonnet Mussolini admired her winning the Nobel Prize. During the War Germans used her house as their staying place. In 1940 she left for the US and from there tried for the liberation of Norway and returned home after liberation. She emerged as an ultra modern writer using stream of consciousness technique. In Norway and Sweden her pictures were used on their postal stamps.

After receiving the Prize she forged ahead. In 1930 she published ‘The Poet’s House’ in 1933 ‘Summer Son’ were written while suffering an incurable ailment. In between 1903-1920, Deledda wrote very successful books. Her novel ‘Ashes’, which came out in 1908 was translated into many languages. In 1920 the novel on mother was translated into English as ‘The Woman and the Priest’. D H Lawrence wrote the foreword for it. After her demise two novels in 1937 and 1939 were published.

She died of breast cancer and was buried with the clothes she wore in the Prize ceremony. She wrote ‘The Church of Solitude’ considered by people in Sardinia as the best. She was considered the best litterateur in the island with classical themes and skilful narrative techniques in story telling.

Sigrid Indset was the third in Norway to win the Nobel Prize. She portrayed the Scandinavian life in middle ages. Recognition for her writing in foreign languages came earlier. After 1928 her novels of middle ages she wrote many others. Not all her 36 books were about middle ages. She was a great narrator of the complexities of the human mind with realistic knowledge. The name Indset is of the village which her father took as his surname.

Sigrid’s themes are not related to Norway alone, as James Joyce’s are not just Irish. Sigrid’s father was an archaeologist. Her mother was Danish. She was the eldest of three daughters. While being young she studied archaeology and the secrets of Scandinavian folk songs. Her father’s death was an unbearable blow for her. She worked as a stenographer to look after the family. Her ability to work with discipline helped her in her literary work.

At sixteen she started writing about Denmark in the Nordic Middle Age and completed it at the age of twenty-two. Her 80 page novel ‘Deceiving Wife’ was accepted by a famous writer. This helped her coming up. She completed ten novels before 1919. With the sale of her books going up she became a full fledged writer. She married in 1912 when she was thirty an artist who divorced his earlier wife. By 1919 she had three children but in 1919 the couple had to separate. At 42, she embraced Catholicism. Her novel ‘Kristin Lavransdatter’ about a woman’s life was 1400 pages long. Her ‘Olav Audunssonn’ was 1200 pages long. There was great maturity in her writing.

In 1934 her novel ‘The Longest Years’ describing her memories of her youth came out. She could complete the first part of her ‘Madam Dorthea’ in 1939. World War I began and drained all their energies and both mother and daughter died. All her books were proscribed by the Nazis. Here house was used by the Nazis as their residence. She lived in a small house in the US and tried for Norway’s liberation. She returned to Norway in 1945 when Norway got free. As a writer sticking to stream of consciousness she became famous. A postage stamp with her picture was issued both in Norway and Sweden.

Pearl S Buck (1992-1973) is remembered by readers all over the world as the author of ‘Good Earth’. She was the first woman to be honoured with the Nobel Prize in 1938. She is held in high admiration not only as a writer but also as a humanist and leader of several movements. In China she was called Sai Jheun Jheun. Her father Absalom Saiden Striker worked in China as a religious protagonist and translated the Bible from Greek into Chinese. In the US mixed nations’ children, according to the law, were not to be adopted. She started Welcome House and adopted about five hundred children.

Several of Pearl’s novels were used for films. RK Narayan’s The Guide was written by her as a play. Her literary efforts reveal her effort, her compassion and kindness towards life and her devotion and obedience to the country she was born and the country where she lived in. She said with passion that it was difficult say as to which country she belonged to. ‘Just as I am obedient to my motherland I am obedient to Asia too’.

At eighty she died of lung cancer in 1973. In the US she was included among the most exalted women and a postage stamp was brought out with her picture.

Gabriel Mistral of Chile won the Nobel Prize in 1945. Even today she is considered as the one of the highest in the list of women poets in Latin America. Her life was full of trials, tribulations and unhappiness. When she was barely three, her father left home. Mistral spent her childhood in their garden and grew with flowers and birds.

She studied in a primary school and at sixteen she had to join as a teacher in the village school. She thought that her passionate writing would effect her work in the school. She changed her name as Gabriela Mistral using the names of two poets she admired. After taking the teaching profession, she decided to spend time fighting for the rights of women. In personal life she fell in love with Romeo Ureta, a railway employee. In 1909 the young man committed suicide with a letter to his wife in his pocket. The young woman remained unmarried. But this helped her writing career.

Her ‘Death Poems’ published in 1914 brought her great name in her country. Chile’s Francisco Donoso, a preacher, commented that her poems were like prayers. In 1929 she dedicated her poems ‘Tree Fall’ to her deceased mother. All her poems came out in a single volume on 1958.

After she joined the League of Nations in Geneva, as an officer she travelled in 1926 extensively in the US and Europe. With her Prize money she brought a house in Santa Barbara in California. Her inspired, emotional and passionate poems are a symbol of Latin America’s ambitions and dreams. In 1953 as a representative of Chile, she spoke about women’s conditions there. Don’t pierce the earth/ Don’t squeeze the sweet fruit/ with love of those/ bend, smell and take it into the mouth.

In 1957 she died of cancer in media sternum at the age of 67. Her pathetic life is the basis of her poetic expression. She always examined her own poems whether they are worth publishing. Of her 779 poems written she published only 339 of them. This was known only after her demise. This reveals her commitment to the muse and the people of those countries about whom she wrote.

Nelly Sachs was the first German and a Jew who won the Nobel Prize in 1966. She was born in German Berlin. Escaping death at the hands of the Nazis her family lived there. Being well to do she was not sent to any school but was taught by a private teacher. Her father inspired and encouraged her to write poetry. She began writing poetry at the age of seven. Writer Stephen Jwaig encouraged her and in 1929 got her poem published. In her poetry Christian mysticism is seen. When she was fifteen she was inspired by the Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf’s novel ‘Goste Berling Saga.’ She cultivated correspondence with her. Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, frightened her. She commented ‘Not knowing answers for their questions I lost my voice.’ She loved a non Jewish young man and her father did not approve of that. The young man was also killed in a massacre. She dedicated in 1947 her novel ‘Prayer for the Dead Bridegroom’ and stayed unmarried. She was once ordered to go to a camp but with the help of Selma Lagerlöf and the prince of Sweden got a visa issued for her and her mother to shift to Sweden, to Stockholm. In this stay her writing flourished.

The Nobel Committee paid high encomiums to her word pictures and her faith in humanism showing only the grief of the people who suffered inhuman treatment from the powerfully cruel officers. She thought that it her duty to witness the pain of the speechless sufferers. Sachs had deep friendship with Paul Selen through letters. When he committed suicide jumping into the river Seine, on the very day of his death, Sachs died of cancer in Stockholm, Sweden. By that time her books were translated into fifteen languages. A memorial was constructed for her and in Berlin a garden was named after her. “World citizen, don’t destroy the world of letters and words. What is life is not death, cradle does not mean blood,” she wrote in a poem describing her own experience.

Nadine Gordimer got the Nobel Prize in 1991. Her writing displays South Africa’s painful history to the world with clarity and delicacy. The conditions causing the disturbing emotional experiences owing to the colour hatred in her fiction long and short with courage. Hatred towards the coloured led to heartless cruelty. It is only because of her writing that the entire world knew about the suffering of the ‘blacks’

Critics praised her writing as a record of sociological history in several angles.

Nadine’s parents were Jews who migrated to South Africa. Her father Isaac Wolf Gardiner at the age of thirteen went to Lithuania. He was making watches and repairing them near the gold mine areas. After some time, he could rise to run an ornaments shop. Nadine’s childhood experiences were the basis of her writing.

In 1945 she joined Johannesburg University and studied there for a year and was shaken seeing the conditions and the heinous treatment meted out to the natives. She wrote a poem praising the then President Crugar at thirteen. She wrote “Come Again Tomorrow’, a children’s story. Nadine’s mother with her sympathy for the natives led her forward.

Nadine’s first collection of stories is ‘Face to Face’ 1949 and long fiction ‘The Lying Days’ 1953. The short story collection The Soft Voice of the Serpent and Other Stories was published in 1952. Her non romantic writing was released as a volume in 2010. Between 1948 and 1994 during the colour hatred three of her novels were proscribed. Of those one was ‘The Late Bourgeois World’, the second was ‘A World of Strangers’ and the third ‘Burger’s Daughter’. These are about the people who suffered heinous treatment.

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released and in 1991 colour discrimination came to an end. A new constitution came in 1993 and in1994 barriers in elections were removed. In a few years Mandela became the President. Nadine won the Nobel Prize in 1991. She wrote ‘The Pick Up’ in 2001. In 2006 her house was robbed and she said “What many experienced has been my turn to experience.” In Alfred’s words by her legendary writings she rendered great help to humanity. She was honoured with doctoral degrees by fifteen educational institutions. She received many literary honours not only from South Africa but also from Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the U.S.

Nadine wrote fourteen novels, sixteen short story collections and non romantic writings. Her fifteenth novel ‘No Time like the Present’ came out in 2012 and got rendered into forty languages. Se said once that she had to try hard for several years to create her own style. She said openly that she had to imitate Ernest Hemingway. Along with her son Hugo she made news pictures on South African happenings on the television. Nadine who did not like to go any where else except South Africa died in her sleep at the age of ninety on Johannesburg.

Tony Morrison got the Nobel Prize in 1993. She was the eighth woman and also the black woman to have won the distinction of getting the Nobel Prize. Romantic creativity and poetic imagination have made her fiction reveal her true American angle of vision. Her father worked hard in the ship building yard. The songs and stories she heard in her childhood influenced her writing. Her grand parents from her mother’s side made her write her 1977 novel ‘Song of Solomon’. She was a brilliant student, the only African American student in her school. As she grew up she began to understand the inevitable colour prejudice of those times. When she was called Ethiopian she could not understand and asked her mother what it meant and knew then that it was not meant as an abuse or ridicule.

She graduated from Howard University. She made her name Tony for .easy pronunciation. From Cornell she got her M A Degree. Harold Morrison married her and in 1958 she became Tony Morrison. She became a mother in 1961 and when got pregnant again her marital life became worse. She left her husband and her job and went to her parents. She once said that she could not be obedient both to her husband and her job.

In 1964 she joined the text book section as sub editor in New York. She thought of expanding a story as a novel ‘The Blue Eye’ adding her childhood experiences, at thirty-nine as a single lady. In 1967, in the institution she was working she became the editor for Romantic Literature.

In 1976-77 while working as a professor in Yale University she brought out her third novel ‘Song of Solomon’ which was highly successful. In 1981 her fourth novel ‘Beloved’ was published. This won the Pulitzer Award. In 1987 she joined the Princeton University as Robert Hogen professor in Human sciences. In 1992 her novel ‘Jazz’ was published. After that ten more novels came out. Besides her eleven novels along with her son Sled Kevin she wrote three books for children.

Tony was the writer who really created Afro American Language. Her writing is traditional in the poor ‘Blacks’ regional language. She said unhesitatingly: “We are Afro-Americans, second class citizens in America. After the War we became consumers. Our joy began in earning. Later we became tax payers. For whom are my dollars? For a tax payer and citizen there would be relations with neighbours, with state and the country.”

While writing ‘Home’ for children’s literature her second son Sled Kevin died and in December she dedicated the novel to him. She could not stand the grief and could not work.

The whites are no important characters in her writings. They are a search for the experience of black women in a society which is under white colour domination. Her novels have historical themes, clear dialogue and very revealing black characters. These really embellish her creations.

Wislava Symborska was the ninth woman to get the Nobel Prize in 1996.Her father was a voracious reader. She was born in West Poland. He used to discuss writing and books with his daughter. Her father breathed his last in 1936 but his family continued living in Kakrov which Germany occupied in 1940. Wislava married in 1948 but the wedding did not last long. In 1945 she wrote her first poem ‘Looking for Words’ published in the local news paper. The Polish government did not allow her first book to be published since the poems did not promote Communist ideology. Wislava made changes and in 1952 brought out the first book ‘That’s why we live For’. In 1954 ‘Questioning Yourself’ came out. She escaped punishment for her sympathy for a Catholic priest in Stalin’s time.

She joined the editorial group of ‘Literary Life’ in 1953 and worked there for thirty years in various capacities. She was recognized not merely as a poet but respected as a reviewer and translator of French poetry. After the dreadful Stalin era, without hatred and with softness she wrote poetry. After 1956 change and quickmess are seen in her writing. ‘I Meditate upon the World’. ‘Salt’, Calling out Yeti’ ‘People on the Bridge’ came out soon. She lived with intimacy with Cornel Philipowisz from 1969 to 1990. Her poems with his reminiscences came out in ‘The End of the Beginning’ in 1993.

Wislova liked solitude. Her poetry is artistic. Democratic, philosophical, moral attitudes permeate her writings. Contemporary poet Cheslov Miloze liked her poetry.

There is humour, intellect, enthusiasm, all woven together by making her poetry unforgettable, praised the critic Stomisla Barank. She used to feel inconvenient when in any assembly she had to speak. She got awards along with the Nobel in the Polish Club, Herder and Goethe awards. Given to excessive smoking she died of lung cancer at the age of eighty-eight. She used to say to people that she knows nothing. Starting writing at five years of age, till death took her away, she went on writing, writing. Life is mingled in poetry and poetry in life, her poetry stood as a text-book lesson.

Elfide Ilinak of Austria who wrote in German got the Nobel Prize for 2004. She is the tenth woman, and the first Austrian to get the prize. She was an actress and a playwright too. Her father was a Czech, a scientist in Chemistry. Her mother wanted to make her daughter a famous musician on Vienna. At fourteen she was sent to a famous college in Vienna.

Elfide made an entry into the world of poetry with ‘Lisa’s Shadow’, a collection of her poetry. She took an active part in student movements. She wrote plays and novels for radio. Her first novel ‘We’re Decoys, Baby!’ came out in 1970. Her 1972 novel ‘Michael: A Young Person’s Guide to infantile Society’ was written after her mental condition stabilized. In 1974 she married Gotrsed Hogesburg. Her first radio play ‘When the son sinks it’s time to close shop’ won great public esteem and praise.

Her themes in poetry, essays and novels dealt with the capitalist system and the male tendency to ill-treat women. Her novel, ‘Banbiland’, is a strong attack on Iraqi war. She gave importance to linguistic experiments. The novels ‘What Happened after Nora Left Her Husband’ 1980, ‘Clara’ in 1984 are important. Of the most important among the novels are ‘Women as Lovers’ 1975, ‘Wonderful, Wonderful Times’ 1980, ‘The Piano Teacher’ 1983, ‘Lust’ 1984 and ‘Greed’ on 2000. ‘The Piano Teacher’ in 2001 came as a film and earnt three great prizes and Cannes Grand Jury Award.

Elfide wrote with a deep understanding of man-woman relationships. She felt that as long as women were given attention only in youth, beauty and body and men develop their sex values through their work and wealth, there would be no change. She considered her winning the Nobel Prize was not a flower in men’s lapels. With social fear she did not even go to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize.

As writer and as a person she had great insight and understanding of her times,

Her writings reveal her commitment to creativity. Not only as a Nobel winner but also as a strong critic of imperialism she got distinctive admiration and recognition in the literary world.

Doris Lessing is a British woman and she got the Nobel Prize at eighty-eight in 2007.

The members of the Nobel Committee praised her as a legendary writer with female experiences, romantic fervour, courage and theory of doubt. Alfred Cook Tailor was her father. When Doris was five the Tailor family shifted to Zimbabwe. Doris studied first in a boarding school and later a Roman Catholic Convent. At thirteen she

left school and began learning at home. She could not stand her mom’s hard rules and left home and went to Salisbury, capital of South Rhodesia. She wrote two novels but tore them off and worked as a nurse and as a telephone operator. She married Frank Wisdom in 1939, at nineteen.

She became a communist and began distributing the party news papers. She divorced her husband in 1943 and left her children and joined Left Book Club of the Communist party. She married a German communist getting into an agreement that she would divorce.

In 1947 she went to England with her son Peter. Her novel ‘The Grass is Singing’ was published on 1950 and got fame. Later it was filmed also. In all she wrote eleven novels Two of those ‘The Diary of a Good Neighbour’ and ‘If the Old Could’ were published in the name of James Somers. Her novels were long and complicated. Critics said she had no patience to have a second look at her writing and rushed to print. She had a heart problem in 1990. In 2008 talking of her writing she said that energy would stay for ever in every one. Her novels “Memoirs of a Survivor’ and ‘Killing Heat’ brought her great fame.

Doris lived in North London. She wrote a will in 2009 leaving a hundred thousand pounds each to her only daughter, novelist Jenny Disky and her painter friend Christopher Couch. She also left her wish that her diary should not be let known to the world as long as her children are alive She left them for safe custody Jenny Disky the novelist. She wrote powerfully with feminism, Sufism. She wrote that she could not live without writing. If she stopped writing, she used to say, she would be

walking on the streets talking to herself.

Herta Müller is a German born in Rumania. She is the tenth woman to win the Nobel Prize - 2009. Her parents are Catherina and Joseph Müller. The atrocities in tyrannical Rumania in political history have been there in her blood. When she lost her job she went in for temporary jobs and for some time she worked as a school teacher. Her collection of stories ‘Low Lands’ was published in 1982. That was proscribed by the Rumanian government. In 1989 Germany gave her an award and she went there to talk about her work. The Rumanian Government bothered her with several questions while investigating.

After she left Germany she worked in several universities and visited England, the US and Switzerland as a visiting professor. Her novel ‘The Passport’ was published in Germany. Critics write that her style is rapid and poetic. Among the novels published later ‘Travelling on one Leg’ came out in 1989, in 1992 ‘All Ready Bake Then,’ and ‘The Fox was Ever the Hunter’, in 1994 ‘The Land of Green Plums’, in 1997. The Appointment’ came. There were twenty books in other genres. She once wrote that people who face and experience suffering under an autocratic government are the subjects of my writing. I chose them for my life and living. Such writings earned her the Nobel Prize in 2009. What she spoke is true. Words in silence and outside hold us captive. When values are destroyed or trampled upon, words of silence reveal them sharply. Without her knowing her revolting voice is heard. That is her personality.

Alis Munro is the thirteenth woman who got the Nobel Prize in 2013. Her original name is Alice Aanai Legdla. In Scotland among her friends is Joyce Hogue. Though she had to look after her agricultural work, at the age of eleven wanted to be a writer. She realized very early that except for reading and writing she had no other abilities.

At school she was at the top of her class. Very young, she read Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. At eighteen she joined and studies in Western Ontario University for two years. While being a student she fell in love with James Munro. In 1951 she shifted to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1973 she taught in Notre dame University creative writing for a low salary. In 1974 she worked as a skilful teacher from home in Western Ontario.

Her first story was ‘The Dimensions of a Shadow’ which came out in a student magazine. Her story ‘The Strangers’ was broadcast by Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation. By 1968 the maturity of her story writing became evident. Her first story collection was ‘Dance of the Happy Shades’ in 1968. In 1978 and 1986 came out ‘How do you think you are?’ and ‘The Progress of Love’.

Alice was branded by many as a feminist writer. From 1977 up to 2012 she published thirteen novels. Her ‘The Lives of Girls and Women’ was proscribed. The Nobel Committee described her as the teacher of contemporary small stories. She was Canadian Chekhov. She described life as she knew in Canada and revealed the unknown meanings and personal tragedies with delicacy. She revealed her idea of a story saying that there was never any difficulty in finding material for a story. Absurd truths are always there in my life, I see them in others, she said. ‘Perhaps it is for this reason I could not write novels,’ she added.

Her prestige grew in her fifth book ‘The Moons and Jupiter’ 1982 and ‘Friends of my Youth’ 1986. In those she started the story with the end first and stopped a story right in the middle. Literary critics do not agree to call her stories short novels. She said “I used to feel that it would have been fine to write novels and thought that only writers of novels are recognized. But the prize rid of that thought’

Along with other awards the higher honour in Canada for literature – Governor General Award - went to Alice four times. Her daughter Sheila is also a writer. She wrote about her relationship with her mother as ‘Life of Mothers and Daughters Growing with Alice Munro’, her personal experience

Alice’s stories are translated into nearly twenty languages. They are extremely readable. They depend on character, region, and time. With emotional portrayal

Alice showed real life. Reading Alice Munro is learning something new and that some thing was never thought of.

Svetlana Alexievich wrote vividly the history of human agonies taking it as her duty and her job. She got her Nobel Prize in 2015. The travails, tribulations and the scathing pain of familial tragedies have been portrayed with commitment by this writer. She is the resident of Belarus aged sixty-seven and began recording the happenings of four decades. The Nobel Committee paid her a glowing tribute in 2015 by saying her writings make readers listen to the people’s anguish in this world in many voices. Even earlier she got awards and encomiums. Literature on unimagined subjects in journalistic style got awards earlier for Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell. This lady is the third. Svetlana was born in Ukraine. After being demobbed, her father returned to his village. His daughter’s creative writing started in her school days. After studying journalistic writing and obtaining a degree she joined the local newspaper office staff in Beresa. Later she went into the job of a school teacher.

While she was writing small stories and news stories the writings of Alexander Adamovich, and Daniel Grannin influenced her. She came up with a new genre which she called unified novel, novel of proofs, or religious novels and legendary chorister writing. This made her a distinguished writer, psychologist, social scientist and teacher. ‘War’s Unwomanly’, her first novel, is completed in 1983. It was destroyed owing to the pressure of Belarasian Centre of Communists. After Gorbachev came into power there was a change. Her novels were appreciated. Two million copies were sold very quickly. The secrets of the experiences of women who took part in World War II would not have been revealed but for her writing. About a million Soviet women fought with the Nazi army. They were all between fifteen and thirty years of age. Nidamarti Uma Rajeswara Rao translated into Telugu ‘War’s Unwomanly’, staying in Moscow in 1988. In 1983 her second book ‘The Last Witness: 100 Unchildlike Stories’ came out. Though not published for a long time the book went into many editions. In 1989 her ‘The Boys in Zinc’ came out. (In zinc coffins Soviet soldiers killed were brought home) For ten years the Soviet people did not know about the Afghan War. After the Soviet Empire collapsed many committed suicide. It was trheir stories that Svetlana wrote in ‘Enchanted with Death’ in 1993. She spent ten years to write ‘Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster’. She talked to about seven hundred people and got the data taped. Svetlana’s writing sounds like group singing which is coming from a long distance.

One word in conclusion: but for this Mukunda Rama Rao’s book, no body in the Land of Telugus would have known so much about these women Poet Laureates.