Boys In Zinc
  • Published: 18 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241264119
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Boys In Zinc

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 May 2017
EBook
2 Mar 2017
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Mesmerizing, haunting stories from the Soviet-Afghan War collected by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

From 1979 to 1989 Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed thousands of casualties on both sides. While the Soviet Union talked about a 'peace-keeping' mission, the dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins. Boys in Zinc presents the honest testimonies of soldiers, doctors and nurses, mothers, wives and siblings who describe the lasting effects of war. Weaving together their stories, Svetlana Alexievich shows us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan conflict: the killing and the beauty of small everyday moments, the shame of returning veterans, the worries of all those left behind. When it was first published in the USSR in 1991, Boys in Zinc sparked huge controversy because of its unflinching, harrowing insight into the realities of war.
  • Published: 18 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241264119
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Also by Svetlana Alexievich

Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults)
Last Witnesses
The Unwomanly Face of War
Chernobyl Prayer
See all

Praise for Boys In Zinc

Alexievich serves no ideology, only an ideal: to listen closely enough to the ordinary voices of her time to orchestrate them into extraordinary books

Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker

What Alexievich is doing is giving voice to the voiceless, exposing not only stories we wouldn't otherwise hear but individuals as well

David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

A masterpiece of reportage

New York Review of Books

Alexievich has become one of my heroes

Atul Gawande

Superbly translated... Alexievich's choice of truth as hero is the right one for the age of Putin and Trump

Giles Whittell, The Times

Alexievich is like a doctor probing the scar tissue of a traumatised nation

Guy Chazan, Financial Times

The least well-known wonderful writer I've ever come across

Jenni Murray, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

The Belarusian writer has spent decades in listening mode. Alexievich put in thousands of hours with her tape recorder across the lands of the former Soviet Union, collecting and collating stories from ordinary people. She wove those tales into elegant books of such power and insight, that in 2015 she received the Nobel prize for literature

Shaun Walker, Guardian

Alexievich's "documentary novels" are crafted and edited with a reporter's cool eye for detail and a poet's ear for the intricate rhythms of human speech. Reading them is like eavesdropping on a confessional. This is history at its rawest and most uncomfortably intimate

Andrew Dickson, Evening Standard

Alexievich's artistry has raised oral history to a totally different dimension

Antony Beevor

As shattering and addictive as Chernobyl Prayer, this is a polyphonic tour de force that shines a light on war, the plight of heroes, and why post-Soviet Russia is as it is

Kapka Kassabova, Herald Scotland