War's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich

In 2015 Ms Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Svetlana Alexievich's books criticize political regimes in both the Soviet Union and later Belarus. Her major works are her grand cycle Voices of Utopia, which consists of five parts. With her 'documentary novels', Svetlana Alexievich, who is a journalist, moves in the boundary between reporting and fiction. In her books she uses interviews to create a collage of a wide range of voices. Svetlana Alexievich depicts life during and after the Soviet Union through the experience of individuals. In Minsk she has worked at the newspaper Sel'skaja Gazeta, Alexievich's criticism of the political regimes in the Soviet Union and thereafter Belarus has periodically forced her to live abroad, for example in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden. She studied to be a journalist at the University of Minsk and worked a teacher, journalist and editor. Alexievich grew up in Belarus, where both her parents were teachers. Her father was Belarusian and her mother Ukrainian. Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine. Through their testimony the past makes an impassioned appeal to the present, denouncing yesterday's and today's fascism. The Soviet press called the book'a vivid reporting of events long past, which affected the destiny of the nation as a whole.' The most important thing about the book is not so much the front-line episodes as women's heart-rending experiences in the war. Soviet writer of Belarussia, Svetlana Alexiyevich spent four years working on the book, visiting over 100 cities and towns, settlements and villages and recording the stories and reminiscences of women war veterans. They killed the enemy who, with unprecedented cruelty, had attacked their land, their homes and their children. Women not only rescued and bandaged the wounded but also fired a sniper's rifle, blew up bridges, went reconnoitering and killed. More than 500,000 Soviet women participated on a par with men in the Second World War, the most terrible war of the 20th century. More than 200 women speak in it, describing how young girls, who dreamed of becoming brides, became soldiers in 1941.

This book is a confession, a document and a record of people's memory.

War's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich