Alexievich Svetlana

On 26 April 1986, at 1.23am, a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents,...

From 1979 to 1989 Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed thousands of casualties on both sides. While the Soviet Union talked about a 'peace-keeping' mission, the dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins. Boys in Zinc presents the honest testimonies of soldiers, doctors and nurses, mothers, wives and siblings...

'A major work by one of our greatest living historians. . . an immense achievement' - Jane Graham, Big Issue'Astonishing. . . Like the great Russian novels, these testimonials ring with emotional truth' - Caroline Moorehead, GuardianExtraordinary stories about what it was like to be a Soviet child during the upheaval and horror of the Second World...

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week*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...

"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? 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,...