Second-Hand Time
Svetlana Alexievich, Translated by Bela Shayevich

Searing winters and scorching ­summers. Long days and nights ­discussing books, films or America with neighbours or friends in kitchens. Small white plates with gherkins and radishes, clinking bottles of vodka, clouds of cigarette smoke. Tchaikovsky on the television; Gorbachev on the radio; the Cold War in the newspapers. And always the fear of a knock on the door.

Radical upsets to the received history of the Soviet Union’s dying decade seem vanishingly unlikely. Perestroika, glasnost, the demise of the empire without a shot fired and then Yeltsin and Putin, the rise of the oligarchs – all of this has filled acres of newsprint and libraries of books. What more is there to learn?

And yet, Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-Hand Time makes a profound psychological, even spiritual impact. Like Tolstoy, she scorns the official narratives, instead presenting us with hundreds of prosaic first-hand accounts.