A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations 

“Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered
Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow...

"From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of communism....

"How the West's obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia: It is impossible to think of Russia today without considering Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world and dominates Western media coverage of Russia to an extraordinary extent. In Russia itself, he is likewise the center of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood...

"A timely, topical book grounding Russia's recent turn towards conservativism in pre-1917 culture and explaining what this shift could mean for the rest of the world"-- "There is no question that tensions between Russia and America are on the rise. The forced annexation of Crimea, the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, and the Russian government's treatment of homosexuals have created diplomatic standoffs and led to a volley of economic sanctions....

Follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times, from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Together, these childhood classmates paint a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionments of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.