Journal of Languages, Texts, and Society, Vol. 3 (Spring 2019), 185-206. © 2019 by Angelos Theocharis. Polyphonic Memory and Narratives of Resilience in Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time Angelos Theocharis University of Edinburgh Introduction “For her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time” (Swedish Academy on Alexievich’s Nobel Award, 2015). Svetlana Alexievich was the first Belarussian and the fifth representative of Russophone literature to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. Alexievich’s case has been one of the most debated Nobel awards, due to the, seemingly, ‘journalistic’ nature of her work (Lindbladh 287). At the same time, critics have praised her for the ethical side of her literature describing it as the moral memory of the Soviet Union (Lashuk; Karpusheva 275; Marchesini 315), which covers the historical period from the Second World War to the post-Soviet era. Nevertheless, Alexievich does not address the political or cultural legacy