Alexievich, now 69, put in thousands of hours with her tape recorder across the lands of the former Soviet Union, collecting and collating stories from ordinary people. Later, the merciless flashlight Alexievich shone on to the Soviet war experience became less welcome in Russia. A million Soviet women served at the front, but they were absent from the official war narrative. ‘Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse, it was a shock for everyone,” she says. Taken together, Alexievich’s books remain perhaps the single most impressive document of the late Soviet Union and its aftermath.

Source: The Guardian July 21, 2017 14:50 UTC