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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > One Soldier’s War In Chechnya

One Soldier’s War In Chechnya

‘I always thought that war was black and white. But it is colour.’ This is a compulsively readable, autobiographical account of life as a young soldier in Russia’s Chechen wars. It takes the raw and mundane reality of days amid guns and grenades and twists it into compelling, chilling – and eerily elegant – prose. With unblinking honesty, Babchenko traces his journey from innocence to experience, beginning with his teenage arrival in the transit camp just north of Chechnya and harsh treatment by his seniors as a naive and scared new recruit, through to his period of active duty at the front, by which time he has become a brutalized and hardened soldier.

This is an outstanding dispatch from the frontline of war – unsparing, unsentimental, blackly comic and brutally beautiful – from an ordinary soldier who tells it like it is. This title will especially appeal to readers of contemporary reportage and war writing – from Michael Herr and Kapuscinski to Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead and Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down; as well as lovers of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Babel, and anyone with an interest in modern Russia.

Author

Arkady Babchenko

Arkady Babchenko

Books

One Soldier's War In Chechnya

Arkady Babchenko was born in Russia in 1977. He fought as an 18-year-old conscript in the first Chechen War of 1995-6 and then volunteered to return for six months in 2000 during the second Chechen War. A law graduate, he has worked in Moscow as a  currently journalist for the non-conformist newspaper Novaya Gazeta. This is his first book. He is married with one small child.

Translator

Nick Allen

Nick Allen

Books

One Soldier's War In Chechnya

Nick Allen is a British journalist who lived in Russia, where he covered the conflict in Chechnya and worked for The Moscow Times. He has also worked for The Daily Telegraph and the German Press Agency dpa. He went on to work for dpa in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he completed a two-year book project on the conflict there. He has also translated for the literary journal, Glas New Russian Writing.

Published by

Portobello Books, 2007
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‘I always thought that war was black and white. But it is colour.’ This is a compulsively readable, autobiographical account of life as a young soldier in Russia’s Chechen wars. It takes the raw and mundane reality of days amid guns and grenades and twists it into compelling, chilling – and eerily elegant – prose. With unblinking honesty, Babchenko traces his journey from innocence to experience, beginning with his teenage arrival in the transit camp just north of Chechnya and harsh treatment by his seniors as a naive and scared new recruit, through to his period of active duty at the front, by which time he has become a brutalized and hardened soldier.

This is an outstanding dispatch from the frontline of war – unsparing, unsentimental, blackly comic and brutally beautiful – from an ordinary soldier who tells it like it is. This title will especially appeal to readers of contemporary reportage and war writing – from Michael Herr and Kapuscinski to Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead and Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down; as well as lovers of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Babel, and anyone with an interest in modern Russia.

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