Name: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
Price: 357.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Author: Alexievich, Svetlana ; Shayevich, Bela
ISBN: 9780399588822

portada Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Type

Physical Book

Author

Svetlana Alexievich

Translated by

Bela Shayevich

Publisher

Random House Trade

Year

2017

Language

English

Pages

496

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.3 x 14.2 x 3.0 cm

Weight

0.39 kg.

ISBN13

9780399588822

Synopsis "Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets "

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times - The Washington Post - The Boston Globe - The Wall Street Journal - NPR - Financial Times - Kirkus Reviews When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work as "a history of emotions--a history of the soul." Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it's like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres--but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. "Through the voices of those who confided in her," The Nation writes, "Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil--in a word, about ourselves." Praise for Svetlana Alexievich and Secondhand Time "The nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich's oral history Secondhand Time."--David Remnick, The New Yorker

Svetlana Alexievich

(Author)

View Author's Page

Writer Svetlana Alexievich is known for her innovative narrative approach that combines oral testimony and literature to explore the major events and tragedies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Born on May 31, 1948, in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine), Alexievich grew up in Belarus, where her family settled shortly after her birth

After studying journalism at the University of Minsk, Alexievich worked as a teacher, reporter, and editor, developing a particular interest in the individual stories of ordinary people affected by historical events. This distinctive approach led her to create a unique literary style, which she herself defines as "novels of voices"

Her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War (1983), compiled the accounts of Soviet women who participated in World War II, revealing their experiences from an intimate and previously unexplored perspective. This work, like many that followed, encountered censorship from Soviet authorities, but also received great recognition for its authenticity and depth

Other of her most influential works include Zinky Boys (1989), which addresses the experiences of Soviet soldiers in the Afghanistan war, and Voices from Chernobyl (1997), a harrowing choral account of the 1986 nuclear tragedy. These books, along with The End of the "Homo Sovieticus" (2013), have established Alexievich as one of the most important chroniclers of the post-Soviet world.

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