‘No heroes, just people’: Svetlana Alexievich on The Unwomanly Face of War | Waterstones.com Blog
‘How can what is human in human beings be protected? That is the question I am trying to answer as I piece together the human spirit.’
A Nobel prize-winner, Belarusian journalist, activist and dissident, Svetlana Alexievich has made it her life’s work to bring people closer to the human face of conflict; interviewing women, children, ordinary citizens and soldiers, the true witnesses to war. Internationally acclaimed, her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War has sold more than two million copies worldwide but has only now been made available in English. An astonishing archive, giving voice to hundreds of Soviet women affected by the Second World War and its aftermath, the Times this weekend called it ‘a symphony of feminine suffering and strength’.
Here, in a new introduction written exclusively for Waterstones, Alexievich offers a rare glimpse into an extraordinary preservation of a forgotten history.
