Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Secondhand Time: the Last of the Soviets
Secondhand Time The Last of the Soviets.jpg
AuthorSvetlana Alexievich
TranslatorBela Shayecivh
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
2013
Published in English
2016
ISBN9780399588822

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Russian: Время секонд хэнд, romanizedVremya sekond khend) is a 2013 book by Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. An oral history of the Soviet Union and its end, it shares the feelings and views of its people as the country transitioned to capitalism. The book contains few comments from the author herself.

Themes

Secondhand Time reflects on the hopes of the Russian people in the early 90s and the broken promises by its politicians. It also documents the cultural and political life of its citizens in Soviet Russia as money and commercial restaurants replaced the influence of books and domestic kitchen spaces.

Reception

The Guardian named it the third best book of the 21st Century. Dwight Garner described it as an "enormous radio" of stories but commented that they sometimes are "baggy and repetitive". Comparing the author to Studs Terkel, Garner praised the observations of Alexievich and the English translation's quality. In The Australian, Mireille Juchau wrote that the work had "magnetic detail" and commented that the subtitle "An Oral History" did not encompass the scale of its contents, citing Ales Adamovich's description of Alexievich as an author of "epic chorus"-style literature.


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