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Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The magnum opus and latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—a symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich 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.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” Read by a full cast: Amanda Carlin Mark Bramhall Cassandra Campbell Kimberly Farr Kirby Heyborne Hillary Huber Rebecca Lowman Jorjeana Marie Coleen Marlo Kathleen McInerney Fred Sanders Praise for Svetlana Alexievich and Secondhand Time “For her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”—Nobel Prize Committee “For the past thirty or forty years [Alexievich has] been busy mapping the Soviet and post-Soviet individual, but [her work is] not really about a history of events. It’s a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.”—Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy “Secondhand Time [is Alexievich’s] longest and most ambitious project to date: an effort to use an oral history of the nineties to understand Soviet and post-Soviet identity.”—The New Yorker “In this spellbinding book, Svetlana Alexievich orchestrates a rich symphony of Russian voices telling their stories of love and death, joy and sorrow, as they try to make sense of the twentieth century, so tragic for their country.”—J. M. Coetzee “[Alexievich’s] 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. . . . A mighty documentarian and a mighty artist.” —Philip Gourevitch
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“[Alexievich] documents the last days of the Soviet Union and the transition to capitalism in a soul-wrenching ‘oral history’ that reveals the very different sides of the Russian experience…[Her] work turns Solzhenitsyn inside out and overpowers recent journalistic accounts of the era…She spends hours recording conversations, sometimes returning years later, and always trying to go beyond the battered and distrusted communal pravda to seek the truths hidden within individuals.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“Secondhand Time [is Alexievich’s] longest and most ambitious project to date: an effort to use an oral history of the nineties to understand Soviet and post-Soviet identity.”
— New Yorker -
“A rich kaleidoscope of voices from all regions of the former Soviet Union…profoundly significant literature as history.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“For the past thirty or forty years [Alexievich has] been busy mapping the Soviet and post-Soviet individual, but [her work is] not really about a history of events. It’s a history of emotions…a history of the soul.”
— Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy
Awards
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A New York Times Editor’s Choice
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A Time Magazine Pick for the Best Books of 2016 So Far
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A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
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A 2016 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, Top 10 Selection
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A Kirkus Reviews Pick of Best Nonfiction of 2016
Secondhand Time Listener Reviews
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About Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexievich is the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. She has received numerous additional awards for her writing, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and a prize from the Swedish PEN Institute for “courage and dignity as a writer.” She was born in Ukraine and studied journalism at the University of Minsk.
About the Narrators
Amanda Carlin is an actress and Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator. She has appeared in such television shows as Law & Order, Lost, Bones, and The West Wing.
Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration. She was been named a “Best Voice” by AudioFile magazine and in 2018 was inducted in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame.
Coleen Marlo is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator who has been nominated for an Audie Award twice, winning in 2011. She has been awarded three Listen-Up Awards from Publishers Weekly, an AudioFile Audiobook of the Year Award in 2011, and was named Audiobook Narrator of the Year for 2010 by Publishers Weekly. She is a member of the prestigious Actors Studio and taught acting for ten years at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. Marlo is a proud founding member of Deyan Institute of Voice Artistry and Technology.
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt, was bitten by the audiobook bug in 2005. She now records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards and won numerous Earphones Awards.
Jorjeana Marie has worked extensively as an actress, comedian, writer, and audiobook narrator. Her narrations have earned her several Earphones Awards. She has performed in hundreds of commercials and starred in the pilot Listen to Grandpa, Andy Ling with Elliott Gould. She is a stand-up comic who has opened for Richard Lewis, Louie Anderson, and Kathleen Madigan. Her video game credits include Final Fantasy, Crackdown 2, and Star Guardians. She loves reading so much it gets her into trouble.
Kathleen McInerney won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2011 and was a finalist for the Audie in 2010 and 2015. Her narrations have also earned several AudioFile Earphones Awards. She has performed in New York and around the United States in both classical and contemporary theater. Her credits also include television commercials, daytime drama, radio plays, and a broad range of animation voice-overs.
Kimberly Farr is an actress and winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration. She has appeared on Broadway and at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Roundabout Theatre, Playwright’s Horizons, and the American Place. She created the role of “Eve” in Arthur Miller’s first and only musical, Up from Paradise, which was directed by the author. She appeared with Vanessa Redgrave in the Broadway production of The Lady from the Sea and has acted in regional theaters across the country, including a performance in the original production of The 1940’s Radio Hour at Washington, DC’s Arena Stage.
Kirby Heyborne is a musician, actor, and professional narrator. Noted for his work in teen and juvenile audio, he has garnered over twenty Earphones Awards. His audiobook credits include Jesse Kellerman’s The Genius, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, and George R. R. Martin’s Selections from Dreamsongs.
Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.
Rebecca Lowman is an actress and audiobook narrator who has won numerous Earphones Awards. She has starred in numerous television shows, including Law & Order, Big Love, NCIS, and Grey’s Anatomy, among many others. She earned her MFA from Columbia University.