Alex Halberstadt

Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is out now, available from Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, or Your Local Bookshop

➽ Young Heroes is a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2020.

➽ Young Heroes is a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

Read an excerpt in The New Yorker

Read an excerpt on Lithub

Read an interview with Alex about Young Heroes in The Paris Review

Read a conversation with Alex about Young Heroes in BOMB Magazine

Read an interview with Alex about Young Heroes in El Mundo (Spain)

Read an interview with Alex about Young Heroes in De Volkskrant (The Netherlands)

Listen to Alex speaking about Young Heroes on NPR’s Bookworm

Listen to Alex speaking about Young Heroes on NPR’s All of It with Alison Stewart

“A loving and mournful account that’s also skeptical, surprising and often very funny… There’s plenty of writing like this in the book—confident, precisely drawn imagery that will make you remember what Halberstadt describes in his own unforgettable terms… It’s the unexpected specificity of Halberstadt’s observations that ultimately make this memoir as lush and moving as it is.“ —The New York Times

“An act of literary archaeology, Young Heroes of the Soviet Union digs through Halberstadt’s childhood memories, surviving photographs and the reminiscences of his parents and grandparents to unearth the dark bedrock of Soviet history. Its finely wrought prose ranges from Moscow in the 1930s to Vilnius in the 50s and New York in the 80s, melding the genres of biography, history and memoir. The book is more than just an account of one family’s ordeals: it is an engrossing account of dictatorship, war and genocide, and how the toxic legacy they left behind has etched itself into successive generations of Soviet citizens. Consumed by Halberstadt’s own longing for meaning, it meditates on the power of storytelling to bind our unstable and episodic memories into a coherent narrative – and on the gaps and enigmas that make this impossible.” —The Guardian (UK)

“A deeply personal book, an engaging and subtle piece of nonfiction full of history and wit.” —The Paris Review

“Alex Halberstadt’s Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a rich bone broth of flavors ... Part memoir, part journalistic foray, part historical investigation, part sociopolitical analysis, Young Heroes plumbs all-too-relevant modern Russian history through the lens of Halberstadt’s family history, written in Halberstadt’s trademark compelling style.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“[A] remarkable family memoir… [an] elegant testimony to the subordination of human life to the will of an overmighty state.” —The Daily Telegraph (UK)

“A striking portrayal… Besides being a compact history lesson it is an astonishing story…. These are the words of a generation of executioners who have never spoken about their deeds. It is this fact that makes Vasily’s confession so extraordinary.” —NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands)

“This terrific, gripping book is, first, the story of sons haunted by their fathers and the terrible times they lived through.” —The Jewish Chronicle (UK)

“An illuminating, dramatic, and wistful family memoir.” —The Spectator (UK)

“Halberstadt has a surprising lightness of touch (given the weighty subject matter), allowing him to deftly explore the impact of his family’s past on the present. It is a very good way of chronicling the individual alongside the behemoth of twentieth-century history: a fascinating and impactful read.” —The Arts Desk (UK)

“[This] personal history stands apart from other titles because, although the journey is framed as a family narrative, historically detailed episodes are impressively illuminated… An impeccably executed and unique genealogy that encourages us to examine the history that informs us of who we are.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A point of intersection between autobiography and history… a wonderful, fascinating, and very subtle read.” —Michael Silverblatt, NPR’s Bookworm

“Alex Halberstadt is a magnificent writer. Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is a beautiful book about trauma and its impact on one extraordinary family, and an incisive, radiant look at the long legacy of suffering and war.”—Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City

“I remember being in a bar with Alex Halberstadt almost 20 years ago, talking about our families, when he said, ‘Did I ever tell you my grandfather was Stalin's bodyguard?’ He hadn’t. I suggested he write a book about it. Not in my most hopeful imaginings did that book turn out to be as surprising, sad, funny, understated, and engrossing as the one he wrote. This is history as memoir, and vice versa. Describing Russia in the 20th century as a place where ‘the buffer between history and biography became nearly imperceptible,’ he made me feel how this is true of all places, for all of us.” —John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

“Reading Young Heroes of the Soviet Union is an immersion in waters of profound depth and bracing lambency. The light glows in the quiet acuity of the prose. And it shines on vast and dire patterns that transcend the merely personal—the unfathomable hardships that nations and families inflict on people, and how we endure. This truly excellent book will transform your understanding of what memoir can do.” —Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

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