Lyuba Vinogradova

En octubre de 1941, ante la necesidad de tropas para frenar el avance alemán, Stalin tomó una decisión sin precedentes: la creación de tres escuadrones de aviación íntegramente femeninos. Vinogradova, investigadora en la sombra de los trabajos de Antony Beevor y Max Hastings, narra la historia de esas jovenes que se calzaron botas militares dispuestas a combatir en el frente oriental. Algunas de ellas eran instructoras de vuelo experimentadas, la inmensa mayoria nunca habia pilotado un avion. Con un marcado rigor historico y una excelente capacidad narrativa la autora nos acompaña a traves de sus vidas en el frente. Anecdotas personales conviven con la crueldad de la batalla en un relato conmovedor que busca reivindicar el papel de la mujer como protagonista de la historia.

"Lyuba Vinogradova is a historian with a writers dramatic eye. By personally interviewing many of the Russian women who as teenagers during WW2 took up arms to defend the motherland, her story becomes undeniably poignant and powerful" MARTIN CRUZ SMITH, author of Gorky ParkThe girls came from every corner of the U.S.S.R. They were factory workers, domestic servants, teachers and clerks, and few were older than twenty. Though many had led hard lives before the war, nothing could have prepared them for the brutal facts of their new existence: with their country on its knees, and millions of its men already dead, grievously wounded or in captivity, from 1942 onwards thousands of Soviet women were trained as snipers.Thrown into the midst of some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War they would soon learn what it was like to spend hour upon hour hunting German soldiers in the bleak expanses of no-mans-land; they would become familiar with the awful power that comes with taking another persons life; and in turn they would discover how it feels to see your closest friends torn away from you by an enemy shell or bullet.In a narrative that travels from the sinister catacombs beneath the Kerch Peninsula to Byelorussias primeval forests and, finally, to the smoking ruins of the Third Reich, Lyuba Vinogradova recounts the untold stories of these brave young women. Drawing on diaries, letters and interviews with survivors, as well as previously unpublished material from the military archives, she offers a moving and unforgettable record of their experiences: the rigorous training, the squalid living quarters, the blood and chaos of the Eastern Front, and those moments of laughter and happiness that occasionally allowed the girls to forget, for a second or two, their horrifying circumstances. Avenging Angels is a masterful account of an all-too-often overlooked chapter of history, and an unparalleled account of these womens lives.Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait

En octubre de 1941, ante la necesidad de tropas para frenar el avance alemán, Stalin tomó una decisión sin precedentes: la creación de tres escuadrones de aviación íntegramente femeninos. Vinogradova, investigadora en la sombra de los trabajos de Antony Beevor y Max Hastings, narra la historia de esas jovenes que se calzaron botas militares dispuestas a combatir en el frente oriental. Algunas de ellas eran instructoras de vuelo experimentadas, la inmensa mayoria nunca habia pilotado un avion. Con un marcado rigor historico y una excelente capacidad narrativa la autora nos acompaña a traves de sus vidas en el frente. Anecdotas personales conviven con la crueldad de la batalla en un relato conmovedor que busca reivindicar el papel de la mujer como protagonista de la historia.Es imposible no admirar el coraje de esas aviadoras que se hacian la ropa interior con la seda de los paracaidas de los pilotos nazis que derribaron. (Jacinto Anton, El Pais)

Narra magistralmente la historia de las muchachas que se ofrecieron voluntarias para luchar contra la invasión nazi de la Unión Soviética. Al igual que hizo con Las brujas de la noche, Vinogradova