The Book Prize Index

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Svetlana Alexievich

"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.

HistoryWorld History · medium confidenceWorld History81 signalsLlm Classifier: World History -> World HistoryKeyword Classifier: Arts & Criticism -> Arts & CriticismTopic Classifier: Group Biography -> BiographyGroup BiographyEurope & RussiaMemoir & Personal History

Award History

1 wins · 2 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current InterestMajor2016WinnerSecondary source
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionMajor2016FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (2)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.