Description:
From Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature: a devastating human history of the Chernobyl reactor disaster, now in an emotive new translation.
First there is the voice of the firefighter's wife, who was kept from going to her husband because he was a dangerous radioactive object. Then the voice of an old woman unable to see why she has to leave her farm and her village. And, of course, the "clean-up crew," the soldiers and scientists for whom everything changed on that fateful day in 1986.
From the tender and intimate stories of people caring for their loved ones as they deteriorate from radiation sickness to the moving stories of the people in the surrounding cities told suddenly to abandon their homes, this definitive translation of Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich's masterpiece closely examines the human realities of the Chernobyl disaster and the half-century we have lived in its shadow.
Review Quotes:
"Beautifully written . . . heart-breaking." --Arundhati Roy, Elle
"Grim and grotesque, the stories accrete across the pages like the radionuclides lodged in the bodies of those who survived." --Nicholas Confessore, The New York Times Book Review
"A collage of oral testimony that turns into the psycho-biography of a nation not shown on any map: the poisoned territory where live Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians who are forever changed by the catastrophe." --Julian Barnes, The Guardian, Best Books of the Year
"A chorus of fatalism, stoic bravery, and black, black humor is sounded in this haunting oral history . . . The result is an indelible X-ray of the Russian soul." --Publishers Weekly
"Shocking accounts of life in a poisoned world. And what quintessentially human stories these are, as each distinct voice expresses anger, fear, ignorance, stoicism, valor, compassion, and love. Alexievich put her own health at risk to gather these invaluable frontline testimonies, which she has transmuted into a haunting and essential work of literature that one can only hope documents a never-to-be-repeated catastrophe." --Starred Review, Booklist