The Dawns Here Are Quiet

A sad but deeply moving book about war. This time, it is not men but women who enter battle—a small women’s detachment led by a male commander. War is not a feminine business, but a real war does not distinguish between men and women, the elderly and children. Here people are killed without even thinking about who they are.

The girls in B. Vasiliev’s work are very different in character, but all of them are united by youth, the desire to love and to be loved, and hatred of the enemy. None of them will have a “tomorrow.” And this contrast—when blossoming life is cut off at its peak—cannot leave anyone indifferent. Books about real war are saturated with special tragedy, but you can learn true things from them: friendship and mutual help, loyalty and responsibility. Above all, they show war without embellishment. Not the kind that boys play at, not the kind that allows people to tell incredible stories, but the kind that it would be better never to have—unnatural, unjust, and wrong. Those who survived and waited for peaceful days will never be able to look at the world the way they did before. B. Vasiliev, who experienced all the horrors of war himself, vividly depicts in his works that war is a catastrophe that affects everyone.