Winner of the Nobel Prize: "For her polyphonic writings, a monument to
suffering and courage in our time." (Swedish Academy, Nobel Prize
citation)
From 1979 to 1989 a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war
in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties - and the youth and
humanity of many tens of thousands more. Creating controversy and
outrage when it was first published in the USSR - it was called by
reviewers there a "slanderous piece of fantasy" and part of a
"hysterical chorus of malign attacks" - Zinky Boys presents the candid
and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and
prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its
lasting effects. What emerges is a story that is shocking in its
brutality and revelatory in its similarities to the American experience
in Vietnam. The Soviet dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins
(hence the term "Zinky Boys"), while the state denied the very existence
of the conflict. Svetlana Alexievich brings us the truth of the
Soviet-Afghan War: the beauty of the country and the savage Army
bullying, the killing and the mutilation, the profusion of Western
goods, the shame and shattered lives of returned veterans. Zinky Boys
offers a unique, harrowing, and unforgettably powerful insight into the
realities of war. The introduction has been omitted due to rights
issues.
