One Soldier's War in Chechnya

by Arkady Babchenko (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $15.24

  A vivid, autobiographical account of what life was like for a young soldier in Russia's Chechen wars, Arkady Babchenko provides an unsparing, unsentimental, blackly comic and brutally beautiful account of active duty.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $40.41

  An outstanding dispatch from the frontline of war - unsparing, unsentimental, blackly comic and brutally beautiful - by and ordinary soldier who tells it like it is.Arkady Babchenko was still a naove 18-year-old when he and his fellow teenage conscripts arrived in a camp just north of Chechnya. Fresh off the truck, the new recruit rapidly learned the meaning of savagery and fear, before he'd even been near the front line. By the time he started his active duty, he had developed a tough skin against the harsh treatments meted out by his seniors and grew hardened and cynical. With unblinking honesty, Arkady Babchenko traces his journey from innocence to experience, taking the raw and mundane reality of war and twists it into compelling, chilling - and eerily elegant - prose.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $30.60

  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 features readers of contemporary reportage and war writing - from Herr and Kapuscinski to Swofford's Jarhead and Bowden's Black Hawk Down ; plus lovers of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel, et al, Russophiles. I always thought that war was black and white. But it is colour. 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.