During World War II, nearly a million girls and women served in the Soviet army. Some were still teenagers when they became snipers, pilots, mechanics, tank drivers, nurses, or surgeons. They were ready to die for their country, and yet at the same time, they longed more than anything to survive. Decades later, Belarusian journalist and writer Svetlana Alexievich listened to their stories and their silences. Slowly, these women found the strength to break a long and painful silence and speak about their war.

“The ‘womanly’ war has its own colours, its own smells, its own light, and its own range of feelings,” says Alexievich, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. Like a powerful polyphonic chorus, these voices reveal a war without heroes or spectacular feats, only human beings forced to carry out inhuman tasks, in a world where everyone suffers unbearably: people, animals, and the earth itself.