{"product_id":"9780399588822","title":"Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER • The magnum opus and latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—a symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE \u003ci\u003eWASHINGTON POST\u003c\/i\u003e AND \u003ci\u003ePUBLISHERS WEEKLY • \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLOS ANGELES TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eBOOK PRIZE WINNER\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e • \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal \u003c\/i\u003e• NPR • \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times • Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time,\u003c\/i\u003e Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eis an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time \u003c\/i\u003etells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” \u003ci\u003eThe Nation \u003c\/i\u003ewrites, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Svetlana Alexievich and \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cb\u003e—David Remnick, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Like the greatest works of fiction, \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time\u003c\/i\u003e is a comprehensive and unflinching exploration of the human condition. . . . In its scope and wisdom, \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time\u003c\/i\u003e is comparable to \u003ci\u003eWar and Peace\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Already hailed as a masterpiece across Europe, \u003ci\u003eSecondhand Time\u003c\/i\u003e is an intimate portrait of a country yearning for meaning after the sudden lurch from Communism to capitalism in the 1990s plunged it into existential crisis.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This is the kind of history, otherwise almost unacknowledged by today’s dictatorships, that matters.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In this spellbinding book, Svetlana Alexievich orchestrates a rich symphony of Russian voices telling their stories of love and death, joy and sorrow, as they try to make sense of the twentieth century.”\u003cb\u003e—J. M. Coetzee\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Random House Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47011295002864,"sku":"9780399588822","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780399588822_p0.jpg?v=1763699638","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780399588822","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}