Svetlana Alexievich sheds light on the involvement of Soviet women (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Siberians, etc.) in World War II. Over 500,000 women – mostly young girls, almost teenagers – actively participated in the Great Patriotic War and at the front lines, not only as nurses and stretcher-bearers but also in roles that were exclusively male until then: machine gunners, snipers, pilots, operators of heavy anti-aircraft and artillery, simple infantry soldiers, radio operators, or partisans behind enemy lines.

Some of these women, who survived and have lived to this day, and whom the author searched for in towns, small cities, and remote villages, recounted their own war – and they did so in a stunning way. This book, which was the first in a series of "books of voices" written by the author-journalist, was first published in 1985 in Russia in 2 million copies (there had been earlier partial publications in magazines) and translated into 35 languages. Several of its stories became the basis for film and television scripts.

The revised edition of 2002 includes sections that had been removed by censorship, as well as material that the author herself had not dared to use at that time. "I see the world with voices, with colors. From book to book, I change, the themes change, but the narrative thread remains. It is the narrative thread of the people I met... With these thousands of voices, I can create, I do not dare to say the reality, the reality remains unspoken, but an image of my time, of my country... and all this constitutes a small encyclopedia, the encyclopedia of my generation, the people I encountered. How did they live? What did they believe in? How did they die and how did they kill? How much did they chase happiness?"

Svetlana Alexievich