Boys in Zinc | Svetlana Alexievich | Granta Magazine

Boys in Zinc

Svetlana Alexievich

Translated by Arch Tait

‘I was trying to present a history of feelings, not the history of the war itself.’

Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich is the author of War’s Unwomanly Face, a collection of Soviet women’s memories of the Second World War, and Enchanted with Death, which looks at attempted suicides as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union. Her other books include Voices from Chernobyl, The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories and most recently Second-hand Time. When ‘Boys in Zinc’ (Granta 34) appeared in a Soviet journal the author received death threats and was forced into hiding. It is extracted from a book on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Translated by Arch Tait

Arch Tait (www.russianwriting.com) has translated 30 books from Russian, and short stories and essays by many of today's leading Russian writers. His translation of Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia was awarded the inaugural PEN Literature in Translation prize in 2010. Most recently, he has translated Mikhail Gorbachev's The New Russia (2016).

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