';A masterpiece' (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prizewinning writer, an oral history of children's experiences in World War II across RussiaNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST 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 for inventing ';a new kind of literary genre,' describing her work as ';a history of emotions . .. a history of the soul.'Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich's collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embeddeda trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation.Collectively, this symphony of children's stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of
