“Secondhand Time” is the fifth and final book in Sviatlana Aleksijevič’s documentary-literary cycle “Voices from Utopia”. In 2015, Alexievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature for her polyphonic writing — “a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

In this book, Aleksijevič writes about the collapse of socialism and the people who remained after it. At the center of the text is the figure of homo sovieticus — the “red man”, shaped by more than seventy years of Soviet ideology.

Through voices, memories, and personal stories, the book shows how the Soviet project tried to remake the human being — and what was left after that experiment ended. As Aleksijevič writes, socialism ended, but its people remained.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the book reads with new force. The “red man” did not disappear: today, he bombs Kharkiv, Kyiv, and other Ukrainian cities.

Translated from Russian into Belarusian by Kaciaryna Macijeŭskaja.

Language: Belarusian
Cover: hardcover
Format: 125 × 200 mm
Number of pages: 558
Place of publication: Lithuania
Year of publication: 2026