Svetlana Alexievich - The Unwomanly Face of War

Svetlana Alexievich

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THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR

Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

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 and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov and Pasternak. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoys Anna Karenina). They are married and live in France.

Magnificent Alexievich doesnt just hear what these women say; she cares about how they speak Its 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

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

Magnificent After decades of the war being remembered by men writing about men, she aims to give voice to an ageing generation of women who found themselves dismissed not just as storytellers but also as veterans, mothers and even potential wives a literary excavation of memory itself Rebecca Reich, The New York Times Book Review

This is an oral history of women who fought in the Second World War. And its brilliant Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Books of the Year

Nothing can quite prepare the reader for the shattering force of Svetlana Alexievichs oral history of Soviet women in the Second World War Geoff Dyer, Observer, Books of the Year

As with her other books, terrifying documentation meets great artfulness of construction Julian Barnes

Alexievichs documentary novels are crafted and edited with a reporters cool eye for detail and a poets ear for the intricate rhythms of human speech. Reading them is like eavesdropping on a confessional. This is history at its rawest and most uncomfortably intimate The book is not merely a corrective to male-centred accounts of conflict; it is a shattering and sometimes overwhelming experience Andrew Dickson, Evening Standard

Much more than a historical harvest, this is a polyphonic book, superbly orchestrated a mark of her exceptional mind Anthony Cummins, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

These accounts fight our ingrained ideas about what makes a war story Vanity Fair

Refusing to pass judgment, crediting all, she listens, suffers and brings to life It took years and many miles of traveling to find and capture all the testimonies here We still end up feeling that we have been sitting at her side. With her, we hear the memories of partisans, guerrilla fighters trapped behind the lines Wall Street Journal

A revelation Alexievichs text gives us precious details of the kind that breathe life into history more than a historical document it is the stuff of history itself 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

We hear the testimony of Soviet women as they rush to the front to in serve a wide range of roles, from nurses to snipers, in the battle against the invading fascists. This book was initially published in Russia in the 1980s, but with a great deal of the explicit detail scrubbed out by anxious authorities. Now with the full text restored and expanded, the book has appeared in a brilliant English translation by Richard Pevear for the first time Kathryn Hughes, Guardian, Books of the Year

One of the most heart-breaking books I have ever read I urge you to read it Julian Evans, Daily Telegraph

Women did everything this book reminds and reveals. They learned to pilot planes and drop bombs, to shoot targets from great distances Alexievich has turned their voices into historys psalm Boston Globe

Alexievich did an enormous service, recovering these stories The Unwomanly Face of War tells the story of these forgotten women, and its great achievement is that it gives credit to their contribution but also to the hell they endured Washington Post

In a post-truth era when journalism is under pressure susceptible to propaganda, sensationalism, and alternative facts the power of documentary literature stands out more clearly than ever Listen to Alexievich The Atlantic

One of the most gifted writers of her generation Economist, Books of the Year

A remarkable collection of testimonies Sitting at kitchen tables, Alexievich coaxes out of the women stories that describe a reality vastly different from the officially sanctioned version . They speak guardedly but vividly of fleeting encounters, deep relationships, unexpressed feelings New Yorker

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First published in Russian as by Mastatskaya Litaratura, Minsk 1985

First published in English as Wars Unwomanly Face by Progress Publishers, Moscow 1988

This translation first published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC 2017

This translation first published in Great Britain by Penguin Classics 2017

This edition published in Penguin Classics 2018

Copyright Svetlana Alexievich, 1985, 2017

Translation copyright Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2017

The moral rights of the author and translators have been asserted

Cover photograph: Hero of the Soviet Union, commander of the 46th Guards Air Regiment Natalya Kravtsova (Meklin). RIA Novosti/Sputnik/Topfoto

ISBN: 978-0-141-98354-7

At what time in history did women first appear in the army?

Already in the fourth century B.C. women fought in the Greek armies of Athens and Sparta. Later they took part in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

The Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: Slavic women occasionally went to war with their fathers and husbands, not fearing death: thus during the siege of Constantinople in 626 the Greeks found many female bodies among the dead Slavs. A mother, raising her children, prepared them to be warriors.