![]() ![]() ![]() The original inspiration for the book was an article Alexievich read in the local Minsk press during the 1970s, about a retirement party for the accountant at a local car factory, a decorated sniper who had killed 75 Germans during the war. Since the Nobel win, her work has found a new international audience, giving her a second stint of fame 30 years after the first. Later, the merciless flashlight Alexievich shone on to the Soviet war experience became less welcome in Russia. ![]() It was written in the early 1980s, and for many years she could not find a publisher, but during the soul-searching of the late-Soviet perestroika period, it tapped into the zeitgeist of reflection and critical thinking, and was published in a print run of 2m, briefly turning Alexievich into a household name. Alexievich reluctantly agreed to deliver a talk about a book she wrote more than three decades ago, The Unwomanly Face of War, which has been republished in a new English translation this month. “It’s tiring to have the attention on yourself I want to closet myself away and start writing properly again,” she says, looking visibly wearied by the travel and spotlight. When I meet her in a cosy basement café in her home city of Minsk, the entrance nestled in an amphitheatre of imposing, late-Soviet apartment blocks, she has just returned from a book tour of South Korea, and is about to embark on a trip to Moscow. ![]()
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