The Unwomanly Face of War - Softcover

Alexievich, Svetlana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141983523 ISBN 13: 9780141983523

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2017

Synopsis

THE TIMES, TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER and ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017

'A must read' - Margaret Atwood

'Extraordinary. . . it would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, Observer

The long-awaited translation of the classic oral history of Soviet women's experiences in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women's history."

In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich set out to write her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, when she realized that she grew up surrounded by women who had fought in the Second World War but whose stories were absent from official narratives. Travelling thousands of miles, she spent years interviewing hundreds of Soviet women - captains, tank drivers, snipers, pilots, nurses and doctors - who had experienced the war on the front lines, on the home front and in occupied territories. As it brings to light their most harrowing memories, this symphony of voices reveals a different side of war, a new range of feelings, smells and colours.

After completing the manuscript in 1983, Alexievich was not allowed to publish it because it went against the state-sanctioned history of the war. With the dawn of Perestroika, a heavily censored edition came out in 1985 and it became a huge bestseller in the Soviet Union - the first in five books that have established her as the conscience of the twentieth century.

About this title

Review:

A must read (Margaret Atwood)

Magnificent. . . Alexievich doesn't just hear what these women say; she cares about how they speak. . . It's a mark of her exceptional mind that she tries to retain the incomprehensible in any human story (Gaby Wood Daily Telegraph Books of the Year)

Brilliant (Kamila Shamsie Guardian Books of the Year)

Nothing can quite prepare the reader for the shattering force of The Unwomanly Face of War, Svetlana Alexievich's oral history of Soviet women in the second world war. In the midst of such colossal suffering hundreds of little details stick in the mind (Geoff Dyer Guardian Books of the Year)

An astonishing book, harrowing and life-affirming. It deserves the widest possible readership (Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train)

Extraordinary. . . it would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original. . . Alexievich's strength - and a mark of her own courage - is that she is forever on the lookout for the seemingly inconsequential, almost trivial human moments. . . Her achievement is as breathtaking as the experiences of these women are awe-inspiring (Viv Groskop Observer)

A revelation. . . Alexievich's text gives us precious details of the kind that breathe life into history . . . This is a book about emotions as much as it is about facts. It is not a historical document in the accepted sense. . . and yet ultimately, which historical documents are more important than this? (Lyuba Vinogradova Financial Times)

A profoundly humbling, devastating book, it should be compulsory reading for anyone wishing to understand the experience of the war and its haunting legacy in the former Soviet Union (Daniel Beer Literary Review)

These stories about the women warriors of Mother Russia are a symphony of feminine suffering and strength. . . Read this book. And then read it again (Gerard DeGroot The Times)

Astonishing. . . Her years of meticulous listening, her unobtrusiveness and her ear for the telling detail and the memorable story have made her an exceptional witness to modern times. . . This is oral history at its finest and it is also an essay on the power of memory, on what is remembered and what is forgotten (Caroline Moorehead Guardian)

About the Author:

Svetlana Alexievich (Author)
Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own, distinctive non-fiction genre which brings together a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Boys in Zinc (1991), Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and Second-Hand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time'.

Richard Pevear (Translator)
Richard Pevear, along with his wife Larissa Volokhonsky, has translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov and Pasternak. They both were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina). They are married and live in France.

Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)
Larissa Volokhonsky, along with her husband Richard Pevear, has translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov and Pasternak. They both were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina). They are married and live in France.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0141983523
• ISBN 13: 9780141983523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384