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Secondhand Time
- The Last of the Soviets
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Kimberly Farr, Kirby Heyborne, Hillary Huber, Rebecca Lowman, Jorjeana Marie, Coleen Marlo, Kathleen McInerney, Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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.
In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past 30 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 from 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 is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world.
A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. "Through the voices of those who confided in her," The Nation writes, "Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil - in a word, about ourselves."
Critic reviews
“There are many worthwhile books on the post-Soviet period and Putin’s ascent.... But 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 Secondhand Time.” (David Remnick, The New Yorker)
“Like the greatest works of fiction, Secondhand Time is a comprehensive and unflinching exploration of the human condition.... Alexievich’s tools are different from those of a novelist, yet in its scope and wisdom, Secondhand Time is comparable to War and Peace.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“The most ambitious Russian literary work of art of the century... There’s been nothing in Russian literature as great or personal or troubling as Secondhand Time since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, nothing as necessary and overdue.... Alexievich’s witnesses are those who haven’t had a say. She shows us from these conversations, many of them coming at the confessional kitchen table of Russian apartments, that it’s powerful simply to be allowed to tell one’s own story.... This is the kind of history, otherwise almost unacknowledged by today’s dictatorships, that matters.” (The Christian Science Monitor)
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Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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Overall
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
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William & Rosalie
- A Holocaust Testimony (Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series)
- By: William Schiff, Rosalie Schiff, Craig Hanley
- Narrated by: Michael Fischbein
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children, and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually explicit view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people.
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Speachless, I wont forget this book
- By Shad on 12-17-14
By: William Schiff, and others
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Dancing Bears
- By: Witold Szabłowski, Antonia Lloyd-Jones - translator, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Gypsies trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, with the fall of Communism, they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance. In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist, Witold Szabłowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout Eastern Europe and in Cuba who, like Bulgaria’s dancing bears, are now free but who seem nostalgic for the time when they were not.
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Intelligent, entertaining, & insightful
- By Kait on 07-23-19
By: Witold Szabłowski, and others
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Two Rings
- A Story of Love and War
- By: Millie Werber, Eve Keller
- Narrated by: Yelena Shmulenson, Eve Keller
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Trapped in Poland in 1941, like many Jews, Millie Werber went from the Radom Ghetto to slave labor in an armaments factory, survived Auschwitz, and toiled in a second factory until liberation came on April 1, 1945. She faced death many times but lived to marry a good man and fellow survivor. Meanwhile, she concealed a photograph in her closet and carried a secret in her heart.
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What a love story
- By Sbear on 11-19-18
By: Millie Werber, and others
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When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
- A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
- By: Le Ly Hayslip, Jay Wurts
- Narrated by: Nancy Kwan
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. The youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. Ultimately fleeing to the U.S. with her children, she finally found peace, and in 1986, she was reunited with her family in Vietnam. The story of her homecoming, interwoven with her memories of the war years, paints a vivid picture of a noble, optimistic woman and her native country.
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Difficult to listen to
- By heatherhg on 07-01-07
By: Le Ly Hayslip, and others
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The Secret Holocaust Diaries
- The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister
- By: Nonna Bannister, Denise George, Carolyn Tomlin
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gallagher
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For half a century, a terrible secret lay hidden, locked in a trunk in an attic... photos, official documents, and scraps of a diary written by a young girl. "The time has come when I must share my life story... some facts from the past that could make a contribution, however small it may be, to the history of mankind." The Secret Holocaust Diaries is a haunting eyewitness account of Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister, a remarkable Russian-American woman who saw and survived unspeakable evils as a young girl.
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I respect Nonna
- By Susan on 12-26-11
By: Nonna Bannister, and others
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Between Two Worlds
- Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
- By: Zainab Salbi, Laurie Becklund
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Zainab Salbi was 11-years-old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle". She watched as Saddam pitted friends, spouses, and even children against each other to compete for his approval.
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An excellent history lesson
- By Ella on 12-01-09
By: Zainab Salbi, and others
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The Girl Who Smiled Beads
- A Story of War and What Comes After
- By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
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Country of Ash
- A Jewish Doctor in Poland, 1939-1945
- By: Edward Reicher, Magda Bogin - translator
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Country of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises. He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.
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Excellent
- By valia on 07-12-15
By: Edward Reicher, and others
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After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
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A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
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Shalimar the Clown
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Aasif Mandvi
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Maximilian Ophuls is murdered outside his daughter's home by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, it appears to be a political killing. Ophuls is the former U.S. ambassador to India and America's leading figure in counter-terrorism. But there is much more to Ophuls and his assassin, a mysterious man calling himself "Shalimar the Clown", than meets the eye. One woman is at the center of their shared history, a history of betrayal and deception.
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Incredible
- By Barry on 12-07-05
By: Salman Rushdie
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Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
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The Morning They Came for Us
- Dispatches from Syria
- By: Janine di Giovanni
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Doing for Syria what Imperial Life in the Emerald City did for the war in Iraq, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawing from years of experience covering Syria for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the front pages of the New York Times, award-winning journalist Janine di Giovanni gives us a tour de force of war reportage, all told through the perspective of ordinary people.
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Bearing Witness to the Brutalities of War
- By Theo Horesh on 06-07-18
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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Iron Curtain
- The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 26 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete.
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Important story, imperfectly executed
- By jackifus on 12-08-12
By: Anne Applebaum
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Waiting for the Barbarians
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
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An Interesting Read For The Current Times
- By Jen on 04-05-20
By: J. M. Coetzee
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The Whisperers
- Private Life in Stalin's Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 29 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
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A Real Life Dystopian Nightmare
- By Timothy on 08-31-18
By: Orlando Figes
What listeners say about Secondhand Time
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sara
- 02-22-17
The Heart, Soul & Iron Fist Of Russia
Prepare yourself. This is not an easy listening experience. Simply put a tour de force from Alexievich. Harrowing, horrifying and heartbreaking but at the same time offering an incredibly insightful and deeply encompassing exploration into Russia and her people.
This is a book that will knock you to your knees and have you repeatedly trying to catch your breath. Not for the faint of heart but worth every minute if you want to begin to understand what makes Russia Russia.
Read the other reviews--many have said it better. Just know there is a reason this book won the Nobel Prize for literature. A must listen for the history lover--but know that listener strength is required.
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43 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-19-16
The mind cannot understand Russia
"Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
She stands alone, unique –
In Russia, one can only believe." - Fyodor Tyutchev
Russia and the spirit and soul of the Russians are very complex at times to foreign minds. My fiance was Russian and left me with so many headaches often trying to understand why she would think a certain way, or always become pessimistic. With this in mind I looked at this book as a way to understand the great change that faced Russia most recently, the collapse of the USSR, the Rise of the Oligarchs, and the Chechen war.
Svetlana Alexievich does a great job of fairly capturing the tragic stories of people from the rural parts to the cities, the staunch communist and the budding democrat and the shock of losing all that they had believed in and worked for during the USSR. Combine this with a growing population ready for freedom but naive and uneducated in what to do in the wilderness of capitalism and tragedy and chaos ensues.
This book is dark and sad. At times, really dark and sad! You visualize the despair and disillusionment as you see another parent drink themselves to death, another wife/husband murdered, a mother telling that she will rejoin her child staying with her aunt hours before jumping in front of a train. You see the depths of depravity as a union of connected countries forced to be brothers are set free and true feelings explode. Through it all, through the carelessness, you see the strength of the Russian soul to persevere through any tragedy, to die before submitting, to dampen desires for love at times, and at times throw their entire family away for a new love. The Slavic soul and spirit is complex and bewildering at times, but this book does a wonderful job of providing context.
For anyone with any interest in Russian/USSR history, interest in learning about the people and culture, or just interest in understanding human psychology at the extremes of hardship, I cannot recommend this book enough!
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18 people found this helpful
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- Brendan
- 08-11-16
This is the way to experience Alexievich
Is there a better writer out there today than Svetlana Alexievich? You'd be hard pressed to find one. "Secondhand Time" is her finest work yet, an absolute masterpiece that more than explains how Alexievich walked away with the most recent Nobel Prize for Literature. And what better way to experience "Secondhand Time" than here. No, there is no better way. This is one of the best audiobooks you'll ever listen to!
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14 people found this helpful
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- BowedBookshelf
- 09-06-16
Absolutely unforgettable, necessary literature
was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything.
That revelation completely changed the way I viewed the world. I ran to my parents, separately, I remember, my eyes wide. I said to each of them, “Ignorance is no excuse!” It won’t save anyone from the repercussions of whatever they are ignorant of. You can die as a result of ignorance or you can participate in something evil as a result of ignorance.
As I remember it, my parents did not say anything. There is much I would think as a result of my eleven-year-old coming to me with such a revelation, and I am not sure I would know what to respond, either. But it was a big moment, and it came from reading a novel.
Now I wonder which novel gave me such an insight, but I cannot remember. I was an ordinary schoolgirl, with no special access to literature. I read too much, my sisters said, and most of them were bodice-rippers…
This book reminds me of that moment of realization. The insights into what man is and how he responds to national, political, and personal trauma come fast and hard in this work. Alexievich begins by recording voices from the Gorbachev years: “Those were wonderful, naïve years…” Both for and against Gorbachev, the voices record people’s naiveté. They had an excuse, the lack of reliable, comprehensive news coverage being one of them, but it would not save them from their future nor their past.
There is simply nothing to compare with this fabulous reconstruction of the lives of people under communism and after. Alexievich records the stories of people under the dictatorship of the people, and there is so much nuance, so much pain, fear, crazy love, faith, and delusion tied in with people’s understanding of those years that it becomes as clear a record of what humanity is that we have.
“Changing the nature of man” was on the table. From the sounds of some voices, it succeeded on every measure. But if nature can be changed, we question again that "nature." Naomi Klein tells us man is not hopelessly greedy but it is hard to see that when greed is rewarded and protected. The Soviet Union, Russia, has gone through enormous social upheaval in the last one hundred years, and Alexievich manages to give us a window through which we can begin to see what happened to people. It is breathtaking.
Among the voices are ordinary folk, high Kremlin officials, members of the brigades who spent their days shooting “enemies of the people.” We see what they were thinking at the time and what they are thinking now. Because governance the world over has many similarities, constraints, and imperatives, everyone who can read should see how governance actually plays out, no matter what we believe.
Alexievich has taken memory and made literature. For me, it will be one of the most meaningful books I have ever come across.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Ásta
- 08-09-16
A book that changes your perspective & read again
if you want something to challenge your views on people, nations, religion or politics then this is a book for you. I felt sad when I finished work
this book - because I missed listening to people's stories. stories that one would never hear unless this book was here.
it is raw - it takes some time to understand how it is structured. but it is easy enough to get into.
it gives one a perspective on why Russia and former Soviet union states are what they are. it demonstrates where they come from. what it means to be ex Soviet. identity crisis, horrors of the gulag, being just happy with the ex status quo. it is a piece of political science, oral history and literature. it gives an insight, it gives us a chance to understand. but also, makes the foreign very close to us and human.
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10 people found this helpful
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- W Perry Hall
- 06-20-16
Wind of Change - Oral History of the Soul
"I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change."
Scorpions, Wind of Change, 1990.
This book was a brass-knuckles punch to my arrogant American belief that all Russians and Eastern Europeans welcomed capitalism with open arms. This is the incinerating oral history of the the ursine Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc from 1991, the time of perestroika, until 2012. The author is Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature from Belarusia. It was published originally in 2013, but translated into English only this year.
The oral history is split into two different periods: first from 1991 to 2001 as the transition from Communism was occurring, and from 2002-2012, which shows, I think, the reverberations of the transformation and transition. This book hits full-throttle from page 1 and is unrelenting until the last page. I've never read anything like it. It's a raw raising of the Iron Curtain to stories of the violence, the attempt to overthrow Gorbachev by the old line communists, suicides and rapes. The first part was taken down while some of the old communists who lived under Stalin were still alive and includes a few jarring jeremiads to solidarity, Lenin, Stalin, and the communistic ideal of heaven on earth.
An example of one of the old Bolsheviks: "You have your own utopia. The market. Market heaven. The market will make everyone happy. Pure fantasy. The streets are filled with gangsters in magenta blazers, gold chains hanging down to their bellies. Caricatures of capitalism. A farce. Instead of the dictatorship or the proletariat, it's the law of the jungle. Devour the ones weaker than you and bow down to the ones who are stronger."
Both parts tell of all the problems in the transition without any planning. People starving. Former Communist apparatchiks who were esteemed scientists who now are unemployed and homeless. Complete overhauls to a way of living from the overnight move from communism to a capitalism-based economy. I plan to read this again because there was so much to digest; the author calls this form of oral history "snatches of street noise and kitchen conversations." I was shocked, for example, to learn of how much the ones interviewed hate Gorbachev now, though they supported him in the early 1990s.
This was like a Thunderbolt thrown into my routine reading. A stunning book that should probably be required reading in any history/civilization type of course.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Nick O.
- 08-09-21
Perfect / Stay With It
I dove into this book not knowing anything about it -- nor, honestly, about Russian history -- and it took me a minute to get into the material and comprehend its rhythm. It opens with a brief chronology of Russia from 1953 - 2014, then presents an oral history, interviews with Russians, with little context or explanation. For instance: "Snatches of Street Noise and Kitchen Conversations, 1991 - 2001," in which various citizens muse and opine and tell stories, as if you're sitting in a smoky bar, just overhearing snatches of conversation. It's a bit dizzying. But if you bear with it, after a minute you'll get into the groove and hear unforgettable stories about life in Russia in the second half of the 20th Century. After finishing it I'm still quite confused about events and key players, but the book presents a fascinating emotional, personal history, and I will remember some of these stories for a long time.
The audiobook works exceptionally well thanks to expert direction and a brilliant cast of narrators, some of the best readers in the business. The way they embody the stories here is remarkable and haunting. Give it a shot. Just keep listening and don't worry too much if you get lost for a bit here and there, especially early on.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Sharlotte
- 07-25-16
Not as expected!
This was totally different from my expectations, but it ended up pretty interesting, even so. Settle in for a LOT of testimonials discouraging you from ever wishing you'd lived/live in Russia! It's an unbelievable catalog of horror stories.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jason
- 05-28-18
Not my style
The topic was of interest to me but the writing style didn't work. Had no storyline - eels more like a stream of consciousness.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer
- 11-02-16
23 hours of Russian voices all in American accents
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Use readers who had Russian accents
How could the performance have been better?
American accents bizarre and off-putting
Any additional comments?
Still listening, but not sure can stay listening to Americans recounting Russians' experiences.
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3 people found this helpful