ONE SOLDIER'S WAR. by Babchenko, Arkady - (2008)

New York:: Grove Press,, (2008). First edition -. Very near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers (lower corner slightly bumped).. Advance Reading Copy (trade paperback format. ) The author's incredibly powerful first book which won Russia's inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write 'despite, not because of, their life circumstances.' "In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-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 naive 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 it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose." Translated from the Russian by Nick Allen. 395 pp.