Second-hand Time

Within what Max Liu in The Independent described as a volume ‘important without sounding self-important… heart-breaking and impossible to put down,’ Second-Hand Time distils, in its extraordinary collage of voices and recollection, a mesmeric portrait of post-Soviet Russia. Already known in the west for her properly-chilling Voices from Chernobyl (now re-issued as Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future), Alexievich’s trademark fusion of narrative, reportage and shifting timelines has already earned her a Nobel Prize in literature. Second-Hand Time brings this unique perspective to bear on the elusive nature of modern Russia, a place where a new kind of society struggles to come to terms with the loss of all they knew, the Soviet machine now stripped and in pieces. Alexievich’s fluid technique brilliantly evokes all the contradictions and heartbreak this describes, a place where an entire people find themselves scratching through an ideological fog to a future they can barely envisage.