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I enjoyed the HBO series, and appreciate the book and podcast recommendations contained in this thread. "Voices of Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich is definite

I enjoyed the HBO series, and appreciate the book and podcast recommendations contained in this thread. "Voices of Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich is definitely at the top of my list of books to read for next year, as the characters in the show seem to have been distilled from her stories based on hundreds of interviews with liquidators and survivors. The following [0,1] news articles describe Ms. Alexievitch's other works including "War's Unwomanly Face" about female combatants in WWII, and "Zinky Boys" about the Soviet-Afghan war. Only a few of her titles have been published widely in English despite her having won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160822202409/http://www.ibtimes.com/4-books-read-svetlana-alexievitch-nobel-prize-literature-winner-ukrainian-belarusian-2132614 https://web.archive.org/web/20160822202409/http://www.ibtime... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160906203202/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/08/svetlana-alexievich-wins-2015-nobel-prize-in-literature https://web.archive.org/web/20160906203202/https://www.thegu...

vintagedave 4y ago
On ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’, may I recommend the translation ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’? It’s a much more recent translation and reportedly — I haven’t read the version you refer to — the older one was heavily edited or censored to focus on war as victory, as positive, rather than the real history and personal impact she wrote about. This Guardian review mentions the original vs the newer translation briefly towards the end: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face-of-war-svetlana-alexievich-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face... Also — and I know this is a weird thing to say about such a horrific topic — I find the translation of the newer title, ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’, much more poetic or fluid phrasing than ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’. It’s English language as beauty rather than the slight awkwardness present in the 1980s translation’s title. It reminds me of ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’, which has a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the newer translated title ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (not that that’s a bad title, it just sounds a bit like the title of a 1930s boy’s adventure novel compared to the nostalgic beauty of Remembrance.)

vintagedave 4y ago

On ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’, may I recommend the translation ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’? It’s a much more recent translation and reportedly — I haven’t read the version you refer to — the older one was heavily edited or censored to focus on war as victory, as positive, rather than the real history and personal impact she wrote about. This Guardian review mentions the original vs the newer translation briefly towards the end: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face-of-war-svetlana-alexievich-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face... Also — and I know this is a weird thing to say about such a horrific topic — I find the translation of the newer title, ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’, much more poetic or fluid phrasing than ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’. It’s English language as beauty rather than the slight awkwardness present in the 1980s translation’s title. It reminds me of ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’, which has a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the newer translated title ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (not that that’s a bad title, it just sounds a bit like the title of a 1930s boy’s adventure novel compared to the nostalgic beauty of Remembrance.)