Secondhand Time - BookWyrm

Hardcover, 470 pages

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2016 by Random House.

ISBN:: 978-0-399-58880-8
OCLC Number:: 939597136

(5 reviews)

"From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals"--

"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style of oral history, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of …

"From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals"--

"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style of oral history, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of Communism. As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals. When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize in Literature, they praised her 'polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,' and cited her for inventing 'a new kind of literary genre.' Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, added that her work comprises 'a history of emotions--a history of the soul'"--

6 editions

Fionnáin reviewed Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Aleksievich

Reading between the lines

5 stars

Svetlana Alexievich is a curator of stories. She is neither strictly an oral historian nor a writer, but somehow straddles both of these worlds. In this fashion, Second-Hand Time is a remarkable catalogue of tales, parables and musings by people from the former Soviet Union, all documented from interviews between 1991 and 2012.

The result is a portrait of a population. Somehow in the multitude of voices that include everything from young to old, from wealthy gentry to starving immigrant, from the islands, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Siberia there is an honest reflection of a complex people. In our current climate, this book also served as a timely warning (unheeded).