Unlimited listening on select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts. Average Customer Ratings. By: . $14.95/month after 30 days. Some stories are more detailed, more memorable than others. Highly recommended. Simply put a tour de force from Alexievich. 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. . Julia Emelin, Allen Lewis Rickman, By: In one of her few, choice inserts to the narrative, author (or compiler?) Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. if you want something to challenge your views on people, nations, religion or politics then this is a book for you. By: Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. Anne Applebaum. Evan Osnos, George Backman. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. It isn't gratuitous violence or pain--it's real and deserves the honor of our reading. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Now I wonder which novel gave me such an insight, but I cannot remember. ISBN, 9780399588822. all what we need to know about perestrojka & best oral history about ussr colaps, By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's. However, beware--it is quite gruesome at times, and one can only cope with so much sadness in little bits. Yang Jisheng, and others. 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. Secondhand Time Audiobook Free | Secondhand Time audio book reading Creating controversy and outrage when it was first published in the USSR - it was called by reviewers there a "slanderous piece of fantasy" and part of a "hysterical chorus of malign attacks". Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Rated by Users & Critics. Reviewed in Australia on January 20, 2017. The Unwomanl... Svetlana Alexievich Read the other reviews--many have said it better. it is raw - it takes some time to understand how it is structured. Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2019. Having read hundreds of books on the Soviet Union and today's Russia there are few that make the kind of impression that Alexievich's latest foray into the lives of generations of former Soviet men and women has left on me. 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. was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything. Narrated by Amanda Carlin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. 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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