In 'Secondhand Time,' Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich captures the haunting voices of ordinary people navigating post-Soviet Russia. Through a tapestry of interviews, she unveils the complexities of loss, nostalgia, and resilience in a society in flux. The book paints a vivid portrait of human experience, revealing how individuals grapple with the remnants of the past while embracing an uncertain future. Each testimony adds depth to the collective memory of a nation, making readers ponder the essence of time and identity. This poignant exploration of life in transition will resonate long after the last page is turned.
By Svetlana Alexievich
Published: 2017
""In the end, we are all secondhand time, remnants of a past that continues to shape our present and future, a testament to our resilience and the stories we carry within us.""
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
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“"In the end, we are all secondhand time, remnants of a past that continues to shape our present and future, a testament to our resilience and the stories we carry within us."”
Secondhand Time
By Svetlana Alexievich
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Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian journalist and author, renowned for her pioneering work in documentary literature. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 for her polyphonic writings, which explore the human experience through the voices of real people. Among her notable works are "War's Unwomanly Face," "Voices from Chernobyl," and "Second-Hand Time," which delve into themes of suffering, resilience, and the aftermath of historical events. Alexievich's distinctive writing style blends journalistic detail with literary depth, capturing the emotional realities of her subjects in a manner that transcends traditional narrative forms.
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