One Soldier's War by Arkady Babchenko A Globe and Mail (Toronto) Best Book of the Year 2008 ISBN: 0-8021-4403-9 / ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4403-4 US $15.00 - 5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 416 pp - Feb. 2009

Description:

Published to extraordinary acclaim around the world, 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. Reviewers have hailed it as “remarkable . . . a work of both autobiography and the imagination in the tradition of . . . Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms” (Hugh Barnes, The New Statesman), “a modern equivalent of All Quiet on the Western Front” (Zurich’s Sonntagszeitung), and “right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr’s Dispatches” (Tibor Fischer, The Guardian). Babchenko chronicles his torturous journey from naïve conscript to hardened soldier with such power, precision, and insight that it transcends his own experience and captures the universal experience of warfare. One Soldier’s War is a devastating book by an extraordinary storyteller that “should be required reading for anyone who still harbors the illusion that war has some redemptive qualities” (Philip Caputo).