Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. 2015 Nobel Literature Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich brings us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan War with nurses, wives, parents, officers and soldiers' oral account of the war. Dead soldiers were brought home in zinc body bags by the tens of thousands, yet the Soviet government vehemently denied their involvement in the war between 1979 and 1989, calling her writing a fantasy. The permanent secretary of the Nobel Academy, Sara Danius, described Alexievich's work as "a history of emotions--a history of the soul, if you wish."