Book
Review
Title: The
Unwomanly Face of War
Author: Svetlana Alexievich
Published originally in
Russian: 1985
Published in English: Penguin,
2017
Translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
War is a subhuman enterprise.
It makes brutes of men. What about women? How does war affect women-soldiers? Nobel
laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s book answers that question eloquently. About a
million Russian women fought in the World War II and the author of this book
met a few hundred of those women in person. This book is narrated by them, in
fact.
Many of the women who speak
though this book were just teenage girls when they joined the forces enthusiastically.
“We were a cheerful cargo,” says one who was a sniper. She is speaking about
her first journey along with other girls to join the forces. “Cocky. Full of
jokes. I remember laughing a lot.” She and her friends were happy to fight for
their nation. They wanted to be at the front. “Everybody was fighting,” she
says, “and we would be, too.” She concludes her memory on a totally different
note, however. The war taught her some hard lessons. “[War] is not a woman’s
task – to hate and to kill. Not for us… We had to persuade ourselves. To
talk ourselves into it.” [Emphasis added]
War is about hating and
killing. It’s not a woman’s task. One ceases to be a woman when one starts
fighting in the war. Many of these women-soldiers we meet in the book say that
they just stopped menstruating. They lost their femaleness. They were no more
women, not supposed to be. “I need soldiers, not ladies. Ladies don’t survive
in war,” they were told explicitly by a commander who was not at all pleased to
know that his women-soldiers had visited a hairdresser and got their eyebrows
dyed.
You are a soldier, not a
woman. Your commander may not even notice that you are a woman. One of the
commanders didn’t know that he was giving orders to a troop of women-soldiers. “Level
your chests,” he ordered. And then asked, “What are you carrying in your shirt pockets?”
Some of the women struggled to suppress their giggles.
If you are caught by the
enemy, you are not only a soldier but also a woman. “They beat me,” says one
about such an experience, “they hung me up. Always completely undressed. They
photographed me. I could only cover my breasts with my hands… I saw people go
mad.”
Victory – the word sounds
beautiful, exhilarating, especially if you are a warrior. But you’d rather love
and kiss. You are a woman, after all. “I dreamed of kissing,” says one of those
women in war. “I wanted terribly to kiss… I also wanted to sing. To sing!”
Shouldn’t life be about those
things actually? About love, kisses, songs? Who wants war? People incapable of
love? Incapable of human refinement? Incapable of being feminine?
Alexievich has given us a
unique book. It is a series of narratives spoken by women-soldiers. Recorded
conversations in broken lines. Conversations that carry a lot of emotions, a
lot of sadness, pain, terror. The book makes us wonder again and again whether
we are as noble a species as we claim to be.
Your synopsis, review and assessment of this seemingly very good book allow your readers to have a peep into its stuff. It must be a unique book, no doubt. All the wars (and riots as well) are and have been men's jobs, women mostly being the victims for no reason on their account. The moment, a woman dons the guise of a soldier (or a rioter), she is no longer a lady. And the commander is right in saying that ladies are not required in a war (or in carrying out a riot, I add). However they are definitely required for inhuman victimization.
ReplyDeleteIt's a painful book, so to say. Every page carries much pain.
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