Zinky Boys

The author, a young Soviet journalist, interviews the conscripts who fought in Afghanistan; she talks to the mothers and widows of the young men who lost their lives in the war, the "Zinky Boys" whose corpses were returned home in zinc boxes. The result is an account of a war which has been little understood in the West (through lack of information) and a portrait of the Soviet Union as it responds to the moral and human problems which the Afghanistan war has thrown into relief. The author has written two books on World War II.