Last week, we published Ukraine: The Price of Freedom, which recommended some books on Russian-Ukrainian relations from a broader perspective.
Under the war and the great power game, what is the life of ordinary people like?
Today we would like to share several works by S.A. Alexievich, a female writer in Russian, showing through the perspective of ordinary people at the turning point of history, and how people pursue their beliefs, dreams, and secrets and fears.
S.A. Alexievich(Свeтлана Аляксандраўна Aлeксиeвич)
S. A. Alexievich was born in Ukraine in 1948 and graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Minsk University in Belarus. She is an influential Russian-language writer in the contemporary world literary scene, writing documentary literature in the form of interviews with the parties, recording major events such as the Second World War, the Afghan War, the Chernobyl incident, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In October 2015, S.A. Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its speech, the Nobel Prize Organizing Committee commented: "Her polyphonic writing has become a monument to the suffering and courage of our time. ”
Alexievich focuses on "non-fiction writing". The material for her writing comes from the real voices and confessions of people she collected in the land of the former Soviet Union. She searched for and sorted out the words of the ordinary, and compiled them into a chorus of the lonely and unknown in history.
"She actually pioneered a unique literary genre: a long confession of political rhythms," commented Alexievich Lu Ningsi, one of the world's introducers in the Chinese world and executive editor-in-chief of Phoenix Satellite TV Information Station( who is also her translator. ”
Last year, CITIC Publishing launched five collections of S.A. Alexievich's works and collected them into the Alexievich Anthology, including: Second-Hand Time, The Prayer of Chernobyl, No Women in War, Zinc-Skinned Baby Soldiers, and The Last Witness: 101 Children Who Lost Their Childhoods in War.
CITIC Academy also invited Tang Ye, a national first-class director of the Beijing People's Art Theatre, to perform the audiobook, which was broadcast exclusively in Lazy Listen.
"Second Hand Time"
The most important work of Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.
After publication, he won the Peace Prize of the German Book Industry (2013), the Medici Prose Prize of France (2013), the Readers' Voting Best Literary Work of the Russian "Big Book Award" (2014), and the Kapczyński Prize of Reportage in Poland (2015).
"Second-Hand Time" shows the lives of ordinary people at key historical moments through oral interviews. The book tells the story of the lives of ordinary Russians in the painful social transition of the two decades from 1991 to 2012 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the price paid for the shattering of dreams.
In the book, everyone, from scholars to cleaners, is rediscovering the meaning of life. Their true narrative presents a major era, a social change, from both macro and micro, giving this far-reaching history a human face.
The author traces the historical process of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet union, allowing ordinary little people to tell their own stories, thus showing how people are at a turning point in history, and how people pursue their beliefs, dreams, secrets and fears, and make people rethink what "Russia" and "Russians" are, why they cannot adapt to the rapid modernization, and why they are still separated from Europe after nearly two hundred years.
The book is divided into two parts, interviewing Russians who grew up under ideals and Russians today, as well as ordinary people in former Soviet countries such as Azerbaijan, presenting details of their lives and feelings and thoughts. The German media praised the book for capturing the smallest mosaics, but spelled out a complete picture of the post-Soviet era. "A micro-Russian history of the second half of the 20th century, written straight to the putin era."
The Prayer of Chernobyl
"The Chernobyl explosion was the most tragic event of the twentieth century, and to this day I still wonder whether what I witnessed was the past or the future. ...... If you are not careful, you will fall into the trap of fear. —Alexievich
Alexievich's masterpiece, the most touching chapter in the "Voices of Utopia" series.
An apocalypse that reflects on the catastrophe of human technology. Human technological dangers such as the Fukushima nuclear leak and the North Korean nuclear test are lurking around us, and when we reflect on history, how can we avoid a recurrence of disasters?
On April 26, 1986, the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine under the former Soviet Union was one of the most tragic technological tragedies in human history. Tens of thousands of civilians have been chronically infected or killed by radioactive material; tens of thousands of acres of land have been contaminated, and Chernobyl has been reduced to ruin overnight.
Ten years after the accident, the famous journalist Alexievich braved the danger of nuclear radiation to go deep into the scene of the accident, which lasted for several years, interviewed more than 500 survivors, and used the voice of ordinary individuals to paste the panorama of the times and write a human apocalypse.
Here, the real experiences of ordinary characters are more amazing than novels. Everyone's voice sees through the collapse of history, the concealment of the state apparatus, the values of Russians, and the anger, fear, bravery, compassion, and love of the people.
"No Women in War"
Alexievich has spent decades wandering the vast land of the former Soviet Union, personally visiting thousands of people who have experienced the events on the front line, consulting documents from all sides, and painstakingly compiling a series of Oral Histories of the Soviet Union – this is the epic of ordinary people's lives.
During World War II, more than a million women fought in the Soviet Union. They are young girls aged 15-30, but they take on the duties that are considered "men's positions", they are doctors, snipers, tanker infantrymen, submachine gunners...
This book is a memoir of Soviet female soldiers and female medical personnel during World War II, recording the war in their eyes, bringing us a completely different perspective - the long-ignored female perspective of the war, but also the impact and shock that has never been seen before.
"Zinc Skin Baby Soldier"
In December 1979, soviet forces invaded Afghanistan and began a decade-long, complex but brutal War in Afghanistan. A generation of Soviet youth enlisted under the banner of "Help Our Afghan Brothers", very young, mostly in their early twenties.
The war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, but the memory of the war is a complex quagmire in which these generations of young people may have been in it for the rest of their lives.
In the form of an oral history, this book records the blood and tears of Soviet officers and soldiers in the War in Afghanistan, as well as their relatives, friends, and children.
The Last Witness: 101 Children Who Lost Their Childhoods in War
During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), millions of Soviet children died, and the survivors lost their loved ones and ended their childhood prematurely.
This book is an oral history of the surviving children of the Great Patriotic War, who were all 2-12 years old when they experienced the war. Children, like adults, endure the most painful parts of war, mature prematurely in war, and at a stage when they should have enjoyed the joys of childhood, "we are already men and women".
The Collected Works of Nobel Laureate S.A. Alexievich