Secondhand Time Secondhand Time

Secondhand Time

The Last of the Soviets

    • 4.5 • 45 Ratings
    • $12.99
    • $12.99

Publisher Description

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 Literature

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

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.”

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2016
May 24
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
496
Pages
PUBLISHER
Random House Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
11.8
MB

Customer Reviews

Scott's take on things ,

Voices of Sorrow and Beaty

This is the first book I’ve read by Alexievich. Her technique is sometimes spare. I was occasionally confused, wishing for more background on who these people were, how Alexievich found them, when exactly she spoke with them. The main informants have mostly tragic stories to tell, some are truly horrific, but they are captivating story tellers. Their memories are crystal clear, they expertly weave their deep knowledge of Russian history and literature into the accounts of their lives. Their love of Russia, the vast countryside especially, and their depictions of familial love, and tragedy, were expressed in highly emotional, operatic ways. Many of the accompanying snippets of conversation Alexievich offers to round out the stories sounded more like the voices you would hear from people on the street: strident, angry, myopic, selfish. It was gripping to read all these accounts, but I found myself wondering how much fictional storytelling was part of it. Perhaps little. But I wanted to know.

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