Books by Svetlana Alexievich

Second-hand Time is the latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In this book she creates a singular, polyphonic literary form by bringing together the voices of dozens of witnesses to the collapse of the USSR in a brilliant, poignant and unique portrait of post-Soviet society.

On 26 April 1986, at 1.23am, a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. While officials tried to hush up the accident, the author spent years collecting testimonies from survivors. A chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, this book shows what it is like to remember in a world that wants you to forget.

"This work is based on Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of WWII, translation copyright Ã2019 by Penguin Random House LLC."

"I love life in its living form, life that's found on the street, in human conversations, shouts, and moans." So begins this speech delivered in Russian at Cornell University by Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In poetic language, Alexievich traces the origins of her deeply affecting blend of journalism, oral...