![]() ![]() … Alexievich’s voices are those of the people no one cares about, but the ones whose lives constitute the vast majority of what history actually is. ‘The people she talks to, the co-authors of her books, are working people, women and elderly people – precisely those who are left behind. Through her books and her life itself, Alexievich has gained probably the world’s deepest, most eloquent understanding of the post-Soviet condition.’ ‘Second-Hand Time is most ambitious work: many women and a few men talk about the loss of the Soviet idea, the post-Soviet ethnic wars, the legacy of the Gulag, and other aspects of the Soviet experience. ![]() ![]() Fashioning a singular, polyphonic literary form by combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, Alexievich creates a magnificent requiem to a civilization in ruins, a brilliant, poignant and unique portrait of post-Soviet society out of the stories of ordinary women and men. Here she brings together the voices of dozens of witnesses to the collapse of the USSR in a formidable attempt to chart the disappearance of a culture and to surmise what new kind of man may emerge from the rubble. Second-hand Time is the latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. ![]()
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