"Second Hand Time" is the latest work of Alexeyevich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature. Through oral interviews, it tells the story of the painful social transformation in the two decades from 1991 to 2012 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lives of ordinary people at critical historical moments, and the price they paid for their shattered dreams. In the book, everyone from scholars to cleaners is searching for the meaning of life again. Their true narrations present a major era and social changes from both macro and micro perspectives, giving this far-reaching history a human face.
Reader comments
Worth reading carefully. Through the voices of ordinary people, it shows people's confusion, pain and struggle amid the collapse of faith and economic turmoil. It contains both the pathos of broken idealism and the helpless indictment of reality. It is a "spiritual history of the times" full of documentary power. It profoundly reveals the complex picture of the collective and individual spiritual world during the historical transition period, and is of great practical significance and ideological depth.
This book truly shows people's lives and inner world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resonates with me. Thinking of my uncle, he was also an experiencer of that era. Many of the stories in the book reminded me of his experiences. Alexievich's interview gave me a deeper understanding of that era. This reminds me of "The Ordinary World", which also tells about the lives of ordinary people in the great era, and makes people feel the hardship of life and people's tenacity.
The writing is really true. The idealism of the Soviet era is like a dream. It has the shortcomings of depression and suffocation, but it was also the youth of a generation. They fought for it and sacrificed for it, so that the current generation can have a stable life.
God will not give you anything so simply, nor will it be given to you for free... Everything depends on you!
20231106 14:09
Listened to it over and over again intermittently
Worth reading carefully. Through the voices of ordinary people, it shows people's confusion, pain and struggle amid the collapse of faith and economic turmoil. It contains both the pathos of broken idealism and the helpless indictment of reality. It is a "spiritual history of the times" full of documentary power. It profoundly reveals the complex picture of the collective and individual spiritual world during the historical transition period, and is of great practical significance and ideological depth.
This book truly shows people's lives and inner world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resonates with me. Thinking of my uncle, he was also an experiencer of that era. Many of the stories in the book reminded me of his experiences. Alexievich's interview gave me a deeper understanding of that era. This reminds me of "The Ordinary World", which also tells about the lives of ordinary people in the great era, and makes people feel the hardship of life and people's tenacity.
The writing is really true. The idealism of the Soviet era is like a dream. It has the shortcomings of depression and suffocation, but it was also the youth of a generation. They fought for it and sacrificed for it, so that the current generation can have a stable life.
God will not give you anything so simply, nor will it be given to you for free... Everything depends on you!
20231106 14:09 Listened to it over and over again intermittently
Recommended, worth reading
Be truthful, objective, calm and rational.
It's a world I don't know
This is my second time reading it!
Sad, but true...