Voices from Chernobyl
-
-
4.7 • 127 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award A journalist by trade, who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book, presents personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986, and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they still live with. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A chorus of fatalism, stoic bravery and black, black humor is sounded in this haunting oral history of the 1986 nuclear reactor catastrophe in what is now northeastern Ukraine. Russian journalist Alexievich records a wide array of voices: a woman who clings to her irradiated, dying husband though nurses warn her "that's not a person anymore, that's a nuclear reactor"; a hunter dispatched to evacuated villages to exterminate the household pets; soldiers sent in to clean up the mess, bitter at the callous, incompetent Soviet authorities who "flung us there, like sand on the reactor," but accepting their lot as a test of manhood; an idealistic nuclear engineer whose faith in communism is shattered. And there are the local peasants who take this latest in a long line of disasters in stride, filtering back to their homes to harvest their contaminated potatoes, shrugging that if they survived the Germans, they'll survive radiation. Alexievich shapes these testimonies into novelistic "monologues" that convey a vivid portrait of late-Communist malaise, in which bullying party bosses, paranoid propaganda and chaotic mobilizations are resisted with bleak sarcasm ("It wasn't milk, it was a radioactive byproduct"), mournful philosophizing ("he mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse") and lots of vodka. The result is an indelible X-ray of the Russian soul.
Customer Reviews
The stories that the world needs to hear!
I had to read this as a primary source for a research paper in college. It broke my heart and made me understand Chernobyl on a much deeper and more personal level. Haunting and devastating but these voices deserve to be heard. The forgotten world of Chernobyl, the lost stories holding the truth we were never told, the silenced voices given life again. This book deserves to be read! Thank you to the author for telling these stories! Five of the saddest stars ever given
An inescapable truth
I recently watched the HBOMax mini series “Chernobyl” and hesitated to read this book fearing I’d be bored - NOT AT ALL! The stories in this book were far more gripping and soul shattering than any portrayal could ever do justice. Strap in for a seriously macabre journey that will leave you with more questions than you started with.