One Soldier's War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier's experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as "right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr's Dispatches," and the book won Russia's inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write "despite, not because of, their life circumstances." In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naive conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war--the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror--and twists it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.
One Soldier's War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier's experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as "right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr's Dispatches," and the book won Russia's inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write "despite, not because of, their life circumstances." In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naive conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war--the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror--and twists it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.
"Babchenko writes courageously about what he has seen--that is why
his book is so graphic. That is why it is not only important as
literature, but also politically."
"Bears comparison with the great literary accounts of any war."
"Breathlessly visual ... Easily bears comparison with the great
literary accounts of other wars, such as Michael Herr's Dispatches
. . . One has rarely read about a military culture in which the
line between war and peace is so blurred."
"Harrowingly good ... This literary account from the front is a
modern equivalent of All Quiet on the Western Front."
A young Russian soldier -recalls fighting in Chechnya and wins his country's in-augural Debut Prize. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
"Babchenko writes courageously about what he has seen--that is why
his book is so graphic. That is why it is not only important as
literature, but also politically."
"Bears comparison with the great literary accounts of any war."
"Breathlessly visual ... Easily bears comparison with the great
literary accounts of other wars, such as Michael Herr's Dispatches
. . . One has rarely read about a military culture in which the
line between war and peace is so blurred."
"Harrowingly good ... This literary account from the front is a
modern equivalent of All Quiet on the Western Front."
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