The Unwomanly Face of War

An Oral History of Women in World War II

By: Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator

Narrated by: Julia Emelin, Yelena Shmulenson

A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“A landmark.” (Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions...a history of the soul.”

In The Unwomanly Face of War, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women - more than a million in total - were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.

Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war - the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories.

Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Unwomanly Face of War is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the 20th century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.

“But why? I asked myself more than once. Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? They did not believe themselves. A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown...I want to write the history of that war. A women’s history.” (Svetlana Alexievich)

Read by Julia Emelin, Yelena Shmulenson, Allen Lewis Rickman, and Alan Winter

THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
“[F]or her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

“A mighty documentarian and a mighty artist... Her books are woven from hundreds of interviews, in a hybrid form of reportage and oral history that has the quality of a documentary film on paper. But Alexievich is anything but a simple recorder and transcriber of found voices; she has a writerly voice of her own which emerges from the chorus she assembles, with great style and authority, and she shapes her investigations of Soviet and post-Soviet life and death into epic dramatic chronicles as universally essential as Greek tragedies.” (The New Yorker)

©2017 Svetlana Alexievich (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Alexievich's artistry has raised oral history to a totally different dimension. It is no wonder that her brilliant obsession with what Vasily Grossman called 'the brutal truth of war' was suppressed for so long by Soviet censors, because her unprecedented pen portraits and interviews reveal the face of war hidden by propaganda." (Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege)

"Whatever you thought you knew about the war, you should put it aside and listen to the voices here." ( Library Journal)

Amazing historical book - well done!

Would you consider the audio edition of The Unwomanly Face of War to be better than the print version?

Yes - hearing the Russian accented narration made the stories even more realistic.

Any additional comments?

Well worth a listen! The Soviet Union payed a terrible price in lives in that war and it is seldom recognized. These ladies are an amazing part of that story that is even less known. Their descriptions of wanting to fight, how poorly prepared the male dominated military was for women in their ranks, and how females in combat were treated during and after the war are both tragic and inspiring. Hats off to the author for bringing these stories to light, and hats off to the women who shared their stories and what they sacrificed during that war.

An inspiring story of Soviet Women at War

This is a deeply ennobling and inspiring, if at times harrowing, account of Soviet women at war. The narration is authentic to the times, with the accent emphasized. It makes it seem like you are actually listening to Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet women tell about their experiences. There are lots of great individual stories found in this book. Its tragic and heartbreaking, but worth the read.

Listened two times in a row.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book is amazing. Not only did I learn about the participation of Soviet women during WW2, this book evokes the very personal experiences of the women without being overly sentimental. I highly recommend this book.

Which character – as performed by Julia Emelin and Yelena Shmulenson – was your favorite?

There was a passage where a woman pleads with her commander to be able to take her husband's body back home to be buried. She speaks about the need to bury him because she will have nothing after the war except his grave. Her family had been killed by the Germans, she had no children and their home was burned down. It was a very moving passage and I cried both times that I listened to it.

Immersive and Devastating

I alternated between being mesmerized, repulsed, heavy with sorrow, and uplifted by the accounts of the women who suffered through the horrors of war on the battleground and behind the scenes. The uncomfortable truth yet aching humanity in every story kept me tied to this audiobook for weeks. I had to pace myself between some of the more horrifying stories. But, at the same time, I am grateful to Svetlana for putting these powerful stories to paper. They are stunning reminders that war, glorified in victory stories and decorations, has a horrible side of hatred, death, and suffering, but human kindness and beauty can still find its way through.

Sad

Such a heart breaking book! I listened to it and loved the stories and the use of different womens voices. I didn’t understand the structure of the book for a while, but once I got the hang of it, I was able to go with the flow. Those Russians don’t mess around!

Can You Imagine?

Possibly one of the most important pieces of literature I’ve ever read. Svetlana Alexievich takes care to intertwine the harrowing accounts with the heartfelt ones. That there are heartfelt ones at all among such horror is a blessing. My heart breaks for these women, and I can only hope that their stories continue to be passed on so that no one forgets their sacrifice. A must read for anyone interested in history, especially history that is buried and ignored.

Remarkable Stories by a Gifted Story Teller

This is the second captivating book by this author that I have read. Personal accounts from women who fought as Soviet snipers and artillery personnel as well as from women medics and nurses in WWII are poignant and often heartbreaking. It would be interesting to hear contemporary women who serve in the military compare their experiences to those of Soviet women who fought 75 years ago.

Masterpiece

I am old enough to have read many hundreds of books on World War 2. Everyone in the world should read this one. There is a reason why this book underpins a Nobel Prize. I believe the performance does justice to the greatness of this work.

Impactful

When reading books the danger is that they start to all sound a bit like a copy of a copy. That's why I'm supremely partial towards unique books that bring me new truths and experiences I have not previously encountered. This is one such book.

"The Unwomanly Face of War" offers a factual and comprehensive account of women's experiences during World War II. The book presents testimonies gathered through extensive research, shedding light on women's contributions during the war.

The narrative explores women's roles and challenges throughout the conflict in a straightforward manner. The author maintains an objective tone, allowing readers to form their own interpretations and connections with the testimonies. And what horrific testimonies, and so, so many, they just hit you wave after wave. And so many of them were still in their teens during the war, children even. Some offer very different experiences while others support each other in how they describe the same things from multiple testimonials.

The book highlights the resilience and sacrifices made by these women without resorting to sentimentality or embellishment. At times it is surprising, and often unsettling, this is obviously not an easy or pleasant read. It provides an objective perspective on the realities of war. Reading the multiple accounts from Ukrainian women also hits you pretty hard considering that war is once again destroying lives there.

I must emphasize the profound and unsettling nature of the testimonies while acknowledging the variety and consistency found within them. The reader encounters a multitude of perspectives and narratives, even humor at times, like the accounts of how "girls will be girls". Creating a mosaic of accounts that collectively contribute to a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Happiness is beyond the mountains, but grief ...

“Happiness is beyond the mountains, but grief is just over the shoulder”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

“There can't be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

Amazing on several levels. Through a chorus of female voices Alexievich brings a new set of eyes to World War II. The experience of Russian women, who fought as snipers, partisans, cooks, engineers, nurses, sappers, etc., during World War II paints the war (and all war) with a humanity and an emotional palette that seldom gets used when covering war. Amazing.

This book was originally published in 1985 under Glasnost. In the preface to this edition (and the preface is one of the best parts of a great book) Alexivich includes sections that she originally self-censored AND parts that were originally cut by Soviet sensors (as well as their comments). This 2017 English version was translated by Pevear & Volonkonsky, the married Russian translation powerhouse famous for their translations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, Alexivich is interested not in big dates, big events, big players. She is interested in the female experience. Her narrative style combines many voices thematically from chapter to chapter (roughly as WWII progresses) to deal with leaving to war, fighting in war, and returning home. Occasionally, she will spend an extended amount of time with a particular sniper, nurse, or tanker whose narrative is fantastically compelling and seems to capture the spirit of those women. But mostly, she is happy to thread these multiple stories together into a narrative quilt that covers not only the female experience of war, but arguably humanity's experience, but the emotional experience that often gets left out of typical "big man" or "big event" histories.