Sir, – Arthur Beesley (An Irishman's Diary, April 26th) wrote about Svetlana Alexievich's book The Unwomanly Face of War, recounting experiences of Russian women in the Red Army during the second World War.
She has also written Boys in Zinc, first published in Russian in 1989 and published in English translation in 2017. It deals with the experiences of Russian soldiers in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 and the effects of those experiences on their families. The “Zinc” in the title refers to the coffins in which soldiers’ bodies were brought back to Russia. President Putin either hasn’t read it or, if he has, has understood nothing of it. – Yours, etc,
ALAN DUKES,
Kildare,
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Co Kildare.