One Soldier's War Audiobook By Arkady Babchenko, Nick Allen - translator cover art

One Soldier's War

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One Soldier's War

By: Arkady Babchenko, Nick Allen - translator
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
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One Soldier's War is a visceral and unflinching memoir of a young Russian soldier's experience in the Chechen wars that brilliantly captures the fear, drudgery, chaos, and brutality of modern combat. An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr's Dispatches, and the book won Russia's inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write despite, not because of, their life circumstances.

In 1995 Arkady Babchenko was an 18-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naïve conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war - the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror - and twists them into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.

©2006 Arkady Babchenko. Translation copyright 2007 by Nick Allen. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc. Wars & Conflicts Biographies & Memoirs Emotionally Gripping Military & War Russia Military Europe World Chechen War

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Interesting insight into the wars in Chechnya and the Russian Army. As a combat veteran, the end was fantastic.

Interesting insight

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Loved the brutal story a must listen to or read,
Hopefully the author will tell more combat storys!

A fantastic book

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Makes me really appreciate my own upbringing in a similar timeframe under vastly different circumstances. It still shocks me that the army of the 90's could be so incredibly cruel with it's own soldiers. Throws them away like they were never there.

Some of the descriptions remind me of other Russian war memoirs from World War Two with the horrific treatment from their own side, and the general horrors of war made worse by incompetence and negligence. I'm glad Babchenko made it out to tell this story.

Must be read, absolutely.

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“One Soldier’s War” is shocking and unbelievable. In the United States one can’t fathom treatment that these soldiers endure from their own and just in general. There are no words for the appreciation one feels living in a free nation. And as we let that slip away, we know what awaits us. But these brave men endured and all we can all just marvel at their bravery and ability to survive. Blown away. Derek Perkins is at his best here.

One of the Very Best Memoirs

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A morbid and detailed account of two of the most brutal wars of the late 20th century.
Not for the faint of heart.
But Babchenko manages to squeeze some humanity from shockingly dehumanizing conflict and that's a fantastic achievement in my book.
Only downside is the structure. It seems to have been organized in the order it was written, resulting in a story that jumps around the timeline frequently and can be confusing at times.

A thoughtful account of a thoughtless war

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