paizliibubs's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

4.5


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dark emotional informative sad tense

3.5


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rachel281's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0


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humblebookdragon's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0


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lectricefeministe's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.0


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alanajane's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


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edulaia's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Here is someone who deserved that Nobel prize. Not by writing her own thoughts but because she gave voice to others.
This book shows all the horrors of war, but it does more than that. It reflects on what it means to be female, what it means to be feminine, what gender is and how it affects people in this extreme situation. It could be read alongside Simone de Beauvoirs Le deuxième sexe and Judith Butlers Gender Trouble. The only thing it misses is any reference to queerness. I get that that is because of the context. Alexievich had trouble getting this past the censors as it is. And maybe it was something that was not even part of the conversations. In any case, this book is well worth reading. 

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5.0


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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

5.0


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feyha's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Could I give this book more than 5 stars? Where do I even start? 

This book has touched me like no other. It touched my soul. It has stories of survival, perseverance, even happiness, where there is nothing but utter despair. It demonstrates the perseverance of a human being, of a woman. 

It's not an easy read at all. But the collection of transcripts makes it easy to get through. As morbid as it may seem, I really really enjoyed reading this book. 

There's just so much about human emotion that we may think we know, but I'm absolutely sure we don't. 

How terrible war is, how people still survive and sometimes manage to thrive, this book talks about it. It's so much more than the glorification of war. It's the real deal. The day to day. 

It talks about what it meant to be a woman, where everything about war, every resource to fight the war, was made having men in mind.

It talks about how men could be so protective of the women in their divisions, so helpful to them, while at the same time go and rape the enemies' women in unspeakable ways. 

It talks about how women were slut-shamed for participating, how their stories were ignored, how the same men who'd give their lives protecting these women during the war, were the ones who humiliated them so after. 

This is a tear-jerker. I wish more would read this book. I wish to read the rest of this author's books sometime in the future- not now, because there's only so much emotional turmoil one can go through. But it was absolutely worth it, every second of it. 

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