Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s ‘Secondhand Time’ in Persian

A book about the disintegration of the Soviet Union from the award winning and Belarusian investigative journalist, author and Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich is available in Persian.

“Secondhand Time” is an oral history of the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. The book was first published in 2013, Mehr News Agency reported on its Persian website.

Translator Shahram Hemmatzadeh who has previously translated another Alexievich’s nonfiction book “Voices from Chernobyl” translated the book from an English rendition. Neyestan company in Tehran is the publisher.

Alexievich, an investigative journalist, gives voice to men and women whose stories are lost in between official narratives, creating a powerful narrative based on the personal experiences of ordinary individuals.

Alexievich, 70, was born in Ukraine and grew up in Belarus and writes in Russian. She spent her early journalist career in Minsk compiling first-hand accounts of World War II, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, fall of the Berlin Wall and the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.

She has won several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2015, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.