THE TIMES, TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER and ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017`A must read` - Margaret Atwood`Extraordinary. . . it would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original` - Viv Groskop, ObserverThe long-awaited translation of the classic oral history of Soviet women`s experiences in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature"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? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women`s history."In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich set out to write her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, when she realized that she grew up surrounded by women who had fought in the Second World War but whose stories were absent from official narratives. Travelling thousands of miles, she spent years interviewing hundreds of Soviet women - captains, tank drivers, snipers, pilots, nurses and doctors - who had experienced the war on the front lines