The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

Overview

A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia—from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • The Guardian • NPR • The Economist • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • Kirkus Reviews

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.”

In The Unwomanly Face of War, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women—more than a million in total—were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.

Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war—the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories.

Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Unwomanly Face of War is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.

THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
“for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” 

“A landmark.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

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

“Alexievich has gained probably the world’s deepest, most eloquent understanding of the post-Soviet condition. . . . [She] has consistently chronicled that which has been intentionally forgotten.”—Masha Gessen, National Book Award–winning author of The Future Is History

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399588723
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 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 nonfiction genre, which gathers a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Zinky Boys (1990), Voices from Chernobyl (1997), and Secondhand 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.”

Read an Excerpt

“I Don’t Want to Remember . . .”
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Unwomanly Face of War"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Svetlana Alexievich.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

From a Conversation with a Historian xi

A Human Being is Greater Than War xiii

"I Don't Want to Remember …" 3

"Grow Up. Girls … You're Still Green …" 19

Of Oaths and Prayers 20

Of the Smell of Fear and a Suitcase of Candy 34

Of Everyday Life and Essential Life 54

"I Alone Came Back to Mama …" 71

"Two Wars Live in Our House …" 91

"Telephones Don't Shoot …" 99

"They Awarded Us Little Medals …" 113

Of Dolls and Rifles 117

Of Death and Astonishment in the Face of Death 122

Of Horses and Birds 126

"It Wasn't Me …" 131

"I Remember Those Eyes Even Now …" 141

"We Didn't Shoot …" 159

Of Nice Little Shoes and a Cursed "Wooden Leg 160

Of the Special "K" Soap and the Guardhouse 168

Of Melted Bearings and Russian Curses 176

"They Needed Soldiers … But We Also Wanted To Be Beautiful …" 185

Of Men's Boots and Women's Hats 186

Of a Girlish Treble and Sailors' Superstitions 197

Of the Silence of Horror and the Beauty of Fiction 207

"Young Ladies! Do You Know: The Commander of a Sapper Platoon Lives Only Two Months …" 211

"To See Him Just Once …" 225

Of a Damned Wench and the Roses of May 226

Of a Strange Silence Facing the Sky and a Lost Ring 239

Of the Loneliness of a Bullet and a Human Being 247

"About Tiny Potatoes …" 251

Of a Mine and a Stuffed Toy in a Basket 253

Of Mommies and Daddies 265

Of Little Life and a Big Idea 271

"Mama. What's a Papa?" 281

Of Bathing Babies and of a Mama Who Looks Like a Papa 281

Of Little Red Fading Hood and the Joy of Meeting a Cat During the War 290

Of the Silence of Those Who Could Now Speak 298

"And She Puts Her Hand to Her Heart …" 303

Of the Last Days of the War, When Killing Was Repugnant 303

Of a Composition with Childish Mistakes and Comic Movies 312

Of the Motherland, Stalin, and Red Cloth 317

"Suddenly We Wanted Desperately To Live …" 323

Editorial Reviews

…magnificent and harrowing…Alexievich charts an extraordinary event through intimate interviews with its ordinary witnesses. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's fluent translation…breathes new life into the memories of the war's female combatants.

The New York Times Book Review - Rebecca Reich

06/01/2017
A worldwide best seller when it was originally published in Russian in 1985, this work by Nobel Prize winner Alexievich (Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets) combines hundreds of oral history accounts with the author's own reflections. Alexievich conducted these interviews between 1978 and 1985, intending to capture "women's history of war." There are reminiscences from nurses, doctors, pilots, airplane mechanics, tank drivers, and countless others who served the Soviet war machine in some capacity. Other "backstage" women recount doing the laundry, cooking, baking, cleaning, tending horses, repairing machinery, and delivering the mail. Alexievich not only records the experiences of others but provides her own reactions as she listens to their accounts—notably the pain, hurt, and pride felt by all. She comments on what women wanted to remember and what they were reluctant to share; these were "good and honest" people, in the words of one interviewee, who believed in the communist idea. VERDICT An engaging and readable history for anyone interested in World War II, women's history, and personal memoirs.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Library Journal

★ 2017-05-10
The Nobel laureate (2015) writes about "the wrong kind of war": oral confessions from Russian women intimately involved with fighting for the motherland.In her distinctive nonfiction style, a mix of her own reflections and transcribed, edited interviews with diverse Russians who have lived through decades of hardship, Alexievich (Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, 2016, etc.) focuses on women who recounted to her amazing stories of their participation in World War II. Although first published in Russia in 1985, with an English-language version published in Moscow in 1988, this version features a sprightly new translation and a restoration—as the author notes in her introductory remarks—of material "the censors" threw out as being unheroic or unpatriotic. As Alexievich writes, war is traditionally known through male voices, yet Russian women, fired up by the urgency to push back the invading Germans, took up the military challenge and demonstrated enormous courage and ability. However, women were often silenced after the war, since assuming traditionally male military duties was seen as unwomanly—indeed, who would marry them? Alexievich writes movingly of how these extremely strong, now-elderly women had rarely been encouraged to tell their stories, but they eventually opened up under her gentle questioning and attention. Most often very young when recruited, the women reveal how they had to beg their male officers to allow them to get to the front line; once they mastered their tasks, the men were amazed at what they could do, and the Germans were horrified to learn that many of the snipers were women. Moreover, beyond their military prowess, of which they were very proud, the women offer touching, intimate details about their service—e.g., being assigned too-large boots and clothing, the shame of having to wear men's underwear and managing their periods, finding love, and the ability to feel empathy for the starving German children after the war. Essential reading full of remarkable emotional wealth.

Kirkus Reviews

A monument to courage . . . It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original. . . . [Svetlana] Alexievich’s account of the second world war as seen through the eyes of hundreds of women is an extraordinary thing. . . . Her achievement is as breathtaking as the experiences of these women are awe-inspiring.”—The Guardian
 
“Magnificent . . . After decades of the war being remembered by ‘men writing about men,’ she aims to give voice to an aging generation of women who found themselves dismissed not just as storytellers but also as veterans, mothers and even potential wives. . . . Alexievich presents less a straightforward oral history of World War II than a literary excavation of memory itself.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Could not have appeared at a more opportune time . . . 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 history’s psalm.”—The Boston Globe
 
“Harrowing and moving . . . 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.”—The Washington Post
 
“We should resolve to read this book alongside the world news report. . . .  Ms. Alexievich never tries to simplify. . . . 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.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Alexievich has forged her own distinctive identity: as a witness to witnesses who usually go unheard. . . . 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
 
“[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.”—The New Yorker
 
“Continually shocking and tearjerking . . . The introductory materials here, in which Alexievich quotes from the journals she kept while working on the project and from her later reflections and dealings with censors, are as compelling as the primary text.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Alexievich gives us an idea of how the army women were perceived by society, during the war and afterwards. . . . These voices, thanks to Alexievich, have themselves become part of history.”—Financial Times

From the Publisher