Review - Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexiévich

Secondhand Time is a hard read, yet one of the best books I have read in a long time. It’s a slow and depressing ~450 pages, but I’d still recommend it to everyone, even those uninterested in history. All could greatly benefit from reading it; there’s too much to learn from the stories in it that is still relevant to this day.

Alexievich’s interviews shows multiple perspectives of the fall of the Soviet Union, covering the years preceding and following it. Interviewees all have different background: there’s old and young, communists and believers of capitalism, men and women, different religious beliefs, if any, and multiple ethnic groups. There is a tangible sense of collective trauma all throughout this book, including in the fervent supporters of the old regime unwilling to admit it.

Getting so close to the lives of people who lived through these historic events has given me a deeper sense of understanding of how history affected the common people in a way that “regular” history books with dates, big names, and numbers could not have given me. Alexievich’s way of telling the stories in this book is unique and powerful, and I’ll certainly seek more of her works in the future.

Note: This review was originally published to The StoryGraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/28245387-a407-466f-9bf9-9b350c381b2e