One Soldier’s War in Chechnya
by Arkady Babchenko
This is a war memoir to rival The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh about Vietnam. It has that same very shocking emotional effect
Recommendations from our site
“It is a universal book about a young guy, conscripted to the Russian army at 18, who went through what many conscripts go through – beatings, bullying by older conscripts and officers, and the shock of being thrown into this most horrible of wars in the 90s. I had the opportunity to see the author speaking a couple of years ago, and it was incredibly moving. He was still young, but had lived and suffered through the unspeakable craziness that war is and, without any formal training as a writer, was able to bring that out in writing. It rivals The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam war. It has that same very shocking emotional effect on me as a reader.” Read more...
The best books on Putin’s Russia
Simon Pirani, Historian
Our most recommended books
-
Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov -
Basil Street Blues
by Michael Holroyd -
The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting
by Victor Stoichita -
Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
by Tarana Burke -
Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory
by Janet Malcolm -
Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon
by Sir Henry Channon