The Unwomanly Face of War

The most famous book by Svetlana Alexievich and one of the most famous books about the Great Patriotic War, where the war is shown for the first time through a woman’s eyes. “War has no woman’s face” has been translated into 20 languages and included in school and university curricula. Nevertheless, the full version of the book is being published for the first time. By removing the censor’s “corrections” and erasing the “traces” of editors, Svetlana Alexievich included in the text not only new episodes, but also restored all omissions—equipping them with pages from a diary she kept for all seven years while the book was being written.

On October 8, 2015, the Russian-language writer Svetlana Alexievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her multi-voiced work—a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”