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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

(Голоса утопии #4)

Svetlana Alexievich,

Keith Gessen (Goodreads Author) (translator),

Alma Lapinskienė (Translator)

4.41 · Rating details · 40,387 ratings · 5,251 reviews

Written by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown—from inn ...more

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Paperback, 236 pages

Published April 18th 2006 by Picador (first published 1997)

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Nov 20, 2011 Nataliya rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Not for the faint-hearted

Shelves: 2011-reads, nonfiction, chernobyl, russian-classics-reviewed

Today, April 26th, is the ~~26th~~ 27th anniversary of Chernobyl catastrophe. In case you're wondering - no, Google did NOT feature it on its home page (same as last year, sadly). But shouldn't humanity remember this disaster?

****
This is one of the most horrifying books I have ever read. It reads like a postapocalyptic story, except for all of it is horrifyingly real.

Svetlana Alexievich, a journalist, provides real but almost surreal in their horror oral accounts of Chernobyl disaster. On April 26 ...more

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Jun 02, 2016 Tatiana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: russian, historical, 2016, non-fiction

I was about 5 when Chernobyl happened, and my family lived near the Baltic Sea, not that far from the explosion zone, relatively speaking. I can't really remember what exactly I understood about what had happened. I remember our family friend's little niece came from Belarus to stay for the summer. I have strange knowledge of the dangers of radiation and mutations and acid rains and death by "belokroviye" (leukemia). I knew a lot of people with enlarged thyroids and I also somehow still know tha ...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Manny by: Pavel

Shelves: science, strongly-recommended, history-and-biography

The Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich spent three years interviewing people who had been involved in Chernobyl: villagers from the surrounding area, "liquidators" (members of the cleanup squad), widows and children, nuclear scientists, politicians, even people who, incredibly, had moved to Chernobyl after the accident. She presents their words almost without comment. Sometimes she adds a [Laughs]; sometimes [Stops]; sometimes [Starts crying]; sometimes [Breaks down completely]. I am not The Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich spent three years interviewing people who had been involved in Chernobyl: villagers from the surrounding area, "liquidators" (members of the cleanup squad), widows and children, nuclear scientists, politicians, even people who, incredibly, had moved to Chernobyl after the accident. She presents their words almost without comment. Sometimes she adds a [Laughs]; sometimes [Stops]; sometimes [Starts crying]; sometimes [Breaks down completely]. I am not sure I have ever read anything quite as horrifying. It is like a very well written post-apocalyptic novel in many voices, and it's all true. Here are some extracts.

From the translator's preface:

The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book show, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding area, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control.

From the Historical Notes:

During the Second World War, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children.

From a liquidator's account:

We had good jokes too. Here's one. An American robot is on the roof of the reactor for five minutes, then it breaks down. The Japanese robot is on the roof for five minutes, then it breaks down. The Russian robot's been up on the roof for two hours! Then someone shouts over the loudspeaker: "Private Ivanov! Two hours more, and you can take a cigarette break!"

From a nuclear physicist's account:

There's a moment in Ales Adamovich's book, when he's talking to Andrei Sakharov. "Do you know," says Sakharov, the father of the hydrogen bomb, "how pleasantly the air smells of ozone after a nuclear explosion?"

From a politician's account:

I was First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Party. I said absolutely not. "What will people think if I take my daughter with her baby out of here? Their children have to stay." Those people who tried to leave, to save their own skins, I'd call them into the regional committee. "Are you a Communist or not?" It was a test for people. If I'm a criminal, then why was I killing my own grandchild?" [Goes on for some time but it is impossible to understand what he is saying]

From a teacher's account:

Our family tried not to economize, we bought the most expensive salami, hoping it would be made of good meat. Then we found that it was the expensive salami that they mixed the contaminated meat into, thinking, well, since it was expensive fewer people would buy it.

From a widow's account:

When we buried him, I covered his face with two handkerchiefs. If someone asked me to, I lifted them up. One woman fainted. And she used to be in love with him, I was jealous of her once. "Let me look at him one last time." "All right."

From a father's account:

My daughter was six years old. I'm putting her to bed, and she whispers in my ear: "Daddy, I want to live, I'm still little." And I had thought she didn't understand anything.

From the author's afterword:

These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unseen. I felt like I was recording the future.

...more

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Jan 03, 2020 Candi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-math-technology, history, non-fiction

"Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."

While cheerful carols played, holiday lights sparkled, and countless dollars were being spent on mostly unnecessary gadgets and superfluous luxuries, I read this account of one of the worst disasters ever to afflict our planet. I sunk further into the funk that threatened the existence of my Christmas tree and that brought my own holiday shopping to a screeching halt. It seemed absur "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."

While cheerful carols played, holiday lights sparkled, and countless dollars were being spent on mostly unnecessary gadgets and superfluous luxuries, I read this account of one of the worst disasters ever to afflict our planet. I sunk further into the funk that threatened the existence of my Christmas tree and that brought my own holiday shopping to a screeching halt. It seemed absurd to parade around with bags in hand while the voices of the survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion echoed incessantly within my head.

Svetlana Alexievich, Ukrainian journalist and winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, has compiled a most remarkable narrative of the catastrophe from the people who witnessed the horror firsthand. Moms, dads, wives, husbands, children, scientists, liquidators, politicians, and even refugees to the area were interviewed and asked to speak candidly. The stories are full of sorrow, shock, bewilderment, anger, and occasionally stoical humor. All were straightforward and unembellished. I sensed that each carried the weight of genuine feeling.

I can’t write anything more meaningful than what the sufferers themselves have already said. Please listen to their voices:

"I killed her. I. She. Saved. My little girl saved me, she took the whole radioactive shock into herself, she was like the lightning rod for it. She was so small."

"The future is destroying me, not the past."

"You’re a normal person! And then one day you’re suddenly turned into a Chernobyl person. Into an animal, something that everyone’s interested in, and that no one knows anything about. You want to be like everyone else, and now you can’t."

"I want to bear witness: my daughter died from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget about it."

"I suddenly started wondering about what’s better—to remember or to forget?"

"If we’d beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we’d understood Chernobyl. But we don’t know how to capture any meaning from it. We’re not capable of it. We can’t place it in our human experience or our human time-frame."

"We’re all—peddlers of the apocalypse. Big and small. I have these images in my mind, these pictures."

"There are ten million Belarussians, and two million of us live on poisoned land. It’s a huge devil’s laboratory."

"This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war."

"Chernobyl is the catastrophe of the Russian mind-set… it wasn’t just the reactor that exploded, but an entire system of values."

"The kids draw Chernobyl. The trees in the pictures grow upside-down. The water in the rivers is red or yellow. They’ll draw it and then cry."

"… everyone was raised to think that the peaceful Soviet atom was as safe as peat or coal. We were people chained by fear and prejudices. We had the superstition of our faith."

"I used to write poems. I was in love with a girl. In fifth grade. In seventh grade I found out about death."

It’s not difficult to be shocked by the statistics of the disaster. You can look those up anywhere and your jaw will drop. But to understand what ordinary people like me and you went through is absolutely heart-rending. Reading their words, commiserating with their feelings of misery and fear, and knowing that the suffering for many of these people still continues – that is what makes this so impactful. Naturally, I began to think “What if…” But that’s just too painful to ponder any further right now. When I’m feeling braver, I will watch the miniseries I’ve heard so much about. I suspect it will be more frightening than any Stephen King adaptation could ever be.

"What should I tell you? Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one’s ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there’s no fairness on earth."
...more

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Aug 17, 2019 JV (semi-hiatus) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2019

"You feel how some completely unseen thing can enter and then destroy the whole world, can crawl into you."

Dejecting and quintessential, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster contains the harrowing accounts of lives lost and lived after the cataclysmic disaster that happened on April 26, 1986, near the city of Pripyat. The explosion created a seemingly bright crimson glow in the sky. Awestruck, residents nearby marvelled at its exhilarating beauty.

"We didn't know t

"You feel how some completely unseen thing can enter and then destroy the whole world, can crawl into you."

"We didn't know that death could be so beautiful. Though I wouldn’t say that it had no smell—it wasn't a spring or an autumn smell, but something else, and it wasn't the smell of earth."

Little did they know that these series of blasts that had occurred inside block number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has sent forth unbelievable amounts of uranium and other atoms into the atmosphere capable of obliterating, mutating, and rending flesh at will. Time was its greatest ally and death was around the corner fully anticipating the setting sun.

"We already had thousands of tons of cesium, iodine, lead, circonium, cadmium, berillium, borium, an unknown amount of plutonium (the uranium-graphite reactors of the Chernobyl variety also produced weapons-grade plutonium, for nuclear bombs)—450 types of radionuclides in all. It was the equivalent of 350 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima."

These are poignant vignettes about survival, compassion, resilience, fortitude, ignorance, pain, hope, and love. I commend Alexievich for her astounding journalism that she was able to give these individuals their voices. How I wished this nuclear meltdown never occurred — so many innocent lives have been lost when one values cost more than the lives of others. Truly, humans never learn from the past. With technology continuously improving, the more we are put into a situation where we are not well-equipped enough to fully understand and handle such advancements, sometimes to the detriment of our well-being and even others.

How sure are you that history will never repeat itself? At this rate, we know what humans are capable of and if that is not ominously frightening, I don't know what is! It's disheartening for me to say that we will be the harbinger of our own demise.

"I've wondered why everyone was silent about Chernobyl, why our writers weren’t writing much about it — they write about the war, or the camps, but here they're silent. Why? Do you think it's an accident? If we'd beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we'd understood Chernobyl. But we don't know how to capture any meaning from it. We're not capable of it. We can't place it in our human experience or our human time-frame. So what's better, to remember or to forget?"

...more

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Feb 21, 2018 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russia-ukraine, non-fiction, nobel-laureates, history

"Sometime in the future, we will understand Chernobyl as a philosophy. Two states divided by barbed wire: one, the zone itself; the other, everywhere else. People have hung white towels on the rotting stakes around the zone, as if they were crucifixes. It's a custom here. People go there as if to a graveyard. A post-technological world. Time has gone backwards. What is buried there is not only their home but a whole epoch. An epoch of faith. In science! In an ideal of social justice! A great emp "Sometime in the future, we will understand Chernobyl as a philosophy. Two states divided by barbed wire: one, the zone itself; the other, everywhere else. People have hung white towels on the rotting stakes around the zone, as if they were crucifixes. It's a custom here. People go there as if to a graveyard. A post-technological world. Time has gone backwards. What is buried there is not only their home but a whole epoch. An epoch of faith. In science! In an ideal of social justice! A great empire came apart at the seems, collapsed. First Afghanistan, then Chernobyl. When the empire disintegrated, we were on our own. I hesitate to say it, but...we love Chernobyl. We have come to love it. It is the meaning of our lives, which we have found again, the meaning of our suffering.
Like the war. The world heard about us Belarusians after Chernobyl. It was our introduction to Europe" - Chairwoman, Woman's committee of Children of Chernobyl.

My own memories of April 26 1986 and the Chernobyl catastrophe are vague, I was only nine-years-old and not interested in the news. I do however remember my parents being glued to the TV set on that day, I didn't fully understand what was going on, but knew it was bad.
Over time, my knowledge of the disaster remained sketchy, picking up bits of information here and there, but it felt to me like the whole event was brushed under the carpet, for the rest of the world to forget, no outside eyes getting on to what really happened in the clean up operation.
Until now, and reading Alexievich's book, the only image that was strong in my mind is of the abandoned bumper cars from the visiting fair, rotting away in a mechanical graveyard.
That's now all changed.

Whatever her genre, Svetlana Alexievich is an original, a true voice, a voice that is hers and hers alone, but it's through the voice of others, the ones the rest of the world never got to here, opening up on their thoughts, living smack bang in the middle of the worse possible nightmare. Exploring pain and loss on an unprecedented scale, the forgotten speak out, making for one of the most upsetting, harrowing and heart-felt books I will ever get to read. If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's no more than a pinprick to the naked eye, this is writing of immense suffering, of death, the soul of mankind rocked to it's core. But it is also filled with a gigantic love, an all powerful love that no amount of radiation could ever destroy, as these people show what big hearts us humans carry around with us. Some of the accounts within, I just couldn't quite believe, that had me seeing red. Surely this is some sort of joke?, how the hell could these things be aloud to happen?, this was 1986, not 1896, the bodies in control (or should that be no control what so ever) should hang their heads in shame!. The amount of deaths and deformities that should never have been allowed to happen makes me sick to the stomach. Some were unavoidable. Most weren't.

A true history of its people need be no more than the howls of despair of millions of souls. Punctuated by moments of incredible tenderness, courage and grim humour. The scale of the devastation and its insidious nature are perhaps beyond the power of the individual mind to imagine, which is one good reason why the polyphonic form Alexievich has made her own is so unique and so appropriate. Only the voice of the witnesses can do the events justice, and in Chernobyl Prayer, after some shocking facts about the explosion and its immediate aftermath, it's the testimony of those living close by, that grab you around the neck, before dragging you off into their world. Alexievich’s documentary approach makes the experiences vivid, sometimes almost unbearably so, but it’s a remarkably democratic way of constructing a book, and at no point did I ever lose attention. It's far too important for that.

Svetlana Alexievich fully deserved the Nobel Prize for her work. But compare this to the agonising accounts she writes about, it soon becomes meaningless.

A book I didn't want to read, but I HAD to read.
...more

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Oct 08, 2015 Greta G rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, owned-in-english

I will never forget a documentary I saw about the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. This documentary, The Battle of Chernobyl, directed by Thomas Johnson, provides a very good understanding of what happened at the time of the accident and afterwards. It contains rare original footage and interviews with people who were present, or involved in the handling of this catastrophe. It's available on demand on Vimeo and I highly recommend it, because I think it's a really good addi ...more

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Jun 09, 2019 Tammy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As I watched the HBO miniseries about Chernobyl, I thought incessantly about the people: the first responders, the farmers, the children. In short, the entire affected population. Lies were told, contaminated food consumed, lives were lost and are still being lost. The human cost is incalculable and ongoing to this day. Chernobyl should not be referred to as an “accident.” It was, and is, an unimaginable disaster. It destroyed an empire, demoralized a people and shocked the world. This anthology ...more

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Dec 10, 2019 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-book

Damn it. This book broke my heart. I mean I’ve read all about it before, I’ve watched things. BUT, it still breaks my heart all these people went through and the animals! 🥺

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾 ...more

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Jan 16, 2016 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nobels, unforgettable, so-good-it-hurts

Very touching voices, chronicling the Chernobyl experience and comparing life before and after the moment that changed everything.

Svetlana Alexievich captures the suffering of ordinary people of all walks of life, as well as that of professional staff sent to Chernobyl to deal with the crisis immediately after it happened. She creates a social panorama of the society that was affected in its totality by the nuclear disaster.

I will never forget my feelings in 1986, living in West Germany and at Very touching voices, chronicling the Chernobyl experience and comparing life before and after the moment that changed everything.

Svetlana Alexievich captures the suffering of ordinary people of all walks of life, as well as that of professional staff sent to Chernobyl to deal with the crisis immediately after it happened. She creates a social panorama of the society that was affected in its totality by the nuclear disaster.

I will never forget my feelings in 1986, living in West Germany and attending a small town primary school. All of a sudden, global politics became a tangible reality and a threat. Chernobyl was the first man-made disaster that I experienced and understood. After Chernobyl, nothing was ever as innocent as before again. A wake-up call for my social conscience, you could say. But I never grasped what it was like for the people who were there, who saw it happen, who had to make decisions on their future based on that catastrophe. Reading Alexievich gave me inside knowledge of the nightmare I remember from my childhood. While we were just kept away from certain foods, and weren't allowed to play in the sandbox or go on field trips, people in proximity to Chernobyl fought - often hopelessly - for their lives.

I had to put down the book several times and take a break, as the stories are painful to read, particularly those which tell of ordinary issues and problems, and of ordinary people. The individuals telling their stories are not heroes, and they don't have the privilege of being seen and heard and worshipped for their suffering, like religious martyrs or soldiers. They just happened to be singled out by the shared experience of the disaster:

"We're often silent. We don't yell and we don't complain. We're patient, as always. Because we don't have the words yet. We're afraid to talk about it. We don't know how. It's not an ordinary experience, and the questions it raises are not ordinary. The world has been split in two: there's us, the Chernobylites, and then there's you, the others. Have you noticed? No one here points out that they're Russian or Belarussian or Ukrainian. We all call ourselves Chernobylites. "We're from Chernobyl." "I'm a Chernobylite." As if this is a separate people. A new nation."

It is the author's strength to put those silent voices on loudspeaker, to let them have their say, to let them show "the others" what it was really like to live through a nuclear accident. Alexievich gives literature a democratic touch, not putting her creativity in focus, but rather her empathy for the different people she encounters. Her literary skills lies in the careful collection and arrangement of the disparate voices to a reading experience of unique character.

Intense reading! I strongly recommend it to the world of today. Read and think. ...more

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Aug 12, 2020 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, library, 2020, biography, kindle

2020 has been a scary year. For some reason I decided that it would be a good year to read and watch as much as I could about Chernobyl. Maybe not the best idea I have ever had, but at least it has led me to take in some pretty captivating non-fiction content.

First I read Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster which was extremely powerful and nerve-wracking.

Then I watched the Chernobyl series on HBO. While I don’t believe Midnight in Chernob ...more

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Jul 19, 2017 Teodora rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, historical

This book was really, really good and I might consider re-reading it.
What's with us people that we love so much reading about disastrous things like that? ...more

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Jan 04, 2016 Erika rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-read-in-2016

A few years ago, I left a copy of Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History out on the table. It was designed as a sort of breadcrumb trail for my teenaged son who didn’t need to read since he already knew everything. I hoped he might be sucked in by the pictures.
A week later my son walked out of his bedroom clutching the book. “Have you read this!?” he was nearly yelling with urgency. “This guy…I can’t believe…shit! I’m telling my English teacher that he needs to make everyone in the
A few years ago, I left a copy of Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History out on the table. It was designed as a sort of breadcrumb trail for my teenaged son who didn’t need to read since he already knew everything. I hoped he might be sucked in by the pictures.
A week later my son walked out of his bedroom clutching the book. “Have you read this!?” he was nearly yelling with urgency. “This guy…I can’t believe…shit! I’m telling my English teacher that he needs to make everyone in the class read this book!”
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster needs its Maus if only because so many young people in America have never even heard of it. (I actually asked a bunch.) There’s been documentaries, novels, nonfiction accounts, and even a horror movie, but none carry the gravitas of a really important historical retelling.
Luckily Voices from Chernobyl comes very close.
The author is a journalist from Belarus who won the Nobel Prize in 2015. For this account, she interviewed hundreds of residents, people on the cleanup teams, politicians, scientists, the list goes on. She sets them here as monologues from ordinary people, some horrific, some disjointed, some philosophizing, and some darkly funny.
Many of the passages are almost unbearable to read like this quote from a solider on clean up duty.

We came home. I took off all the clothes that I had worn there and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my cap to my little son. He really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain…you can write the rest of this yourself. I don’t want to talk anymore.

In another section a soldier describes killing the household pets left behind in villages that had been evacuated. The animals were radioactive and residents weren’t allowed to take them.

The dogs were waiting for people to come back. They were happy to see us, they ran toward our voices. We shot them in the houses, and the barns, in the yards. They couldn’t understand why are we killing them? They were household pets. They didn’t fear guns or people. They ran toward our voices…
One dog—he was a little black poodle. I still feel sorry for him. We loaded a whole dump truck with them, even filled to the top. We drove them over to the “cemetery.” To be honest it was just a deep hole in the ground even though you’re supposed to dig it in such a way that you can’t reach any ground water, and you’re supposed to insulate it with cellophane. But of course those instructions were violated everywhere….If they weren’t dead, if they were just wounded, they’d start howling, crying. We’re dumping them from the dump truck into the hole, and this little black poodle is trying to climb back out. No one has any bullets left. There’s nothing to finish him with. Not a single bullet. We push him back into the hole and just buried him there. It was just a little household poodle, a spoiled poodle. This one thing stuck in my memory. Twenty guys. Not a single bullet at the end of the day. Not a single one.

Yet, as an American who doesn’t know enough about Chernobyl, I wish the book had contained more historical information. A map would have been helpful, along with an explanation of what exactly happened and an estimate of how many people were affected across what distance. Also, I couldn’t find any structure to the monologues. They blend together with no sense of chronology or related themes, which was hard on my order-seeking brain.
That said, reading this is intense and deeply emotional. I’m thankful to Svetlana Alexievich for putting Voices from Chernobyl into the world because I believe every one of us should know what happened in Pripyat, Ukraine. It should be required reading.
...more

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Apr 23, 2016 Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing

Extraordinary compendium of monologues detailing various effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Alexievich's skill at unearthing horrible, moving truths from her interviewees is notable. I'd suggest supplementing the book with some background reading on Chernobyl (wikipedia is fine), since the medium doesn't allow for a direct re-telling of what happened. The two wives' tales that bookend the narrative will stick with me for a long time. ...more

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Oct 19, 2017 Annemarie rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-german

A very interesting and important book, although sometimes quite hard to read due to the topic. I'm not in the position to judge the individual stories, I can just say that they all hit me in some way, made me emotional and/or made me scoff at all the horrible and unjustified things that took place. ...more

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Oct 11, 2015 Jibran marked it as to-read

Shelves: nobel

Note: This is not a review of the book.

Nobel prize makes us read writers we hadn't even heard of before. A good thing for sure. When I saw the news flash of 2014 lit prize I was like Patrick Who? The same as this year. Well, of course this is my utter ignorance, so far as this year's winner is concerned, who seems to be quite well-known in serious reading circles. If creative non-fiction is as good for Nobel as fiction and poetry, I'm wondering why didn't Ryszard Kapuściński ever get it. Now tha Note: This is not a review of the book.

Nobel prize makes us read writers we hadn't even heard of before. A good thing for sure. When I saw the news flash of 2014 lit prize I was like Patrick Who? The same as this year. Well, of course this is my utter ignorance, so far as this year's winner is concerned, who seems to be quite well-known in serious reading circles. If creative non-fiction is as good for Nobel as fiction and poetry, I'm wondering why didn't Ryszard Kapuściński ever get it. Now that's a serious omission right there, unpardonable.

It is some coincidence that they waited all these years only to remember Svetlana Alexievich when the Western bloc is in a renewed conflict with Russia (and the half of humanity that doesn't buy West-led world security paradigm). Nobel will always deny politics influencing their choices. Sure, but what about blind spots? There was a time when lordly racist hooliganism was garlanded. I'm referring to the erstwhile Kipling Sahib. Disclaimers don't really matter do they. We don't operate in a neutral world. Everything asks to be seen in context, associations will be made where patterns are visible, nothing comes out of a blank slate, especially considering that Nobel has quite a history of awarding prizes to political prisoners or dissidents who had fled to the "Free World" with things to tell and a point to prove, whose work was then (mis)used to lend support to Western policies toward those states aka Nobel as a veritable propaganda tool in the wars of disinformation.

In 2010 the prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo. The guy is nearly a fascist but since he could say openly what Westerners couldn't say to the face of the Chinese premier, many pundits got excited and showered gong-giving plaudits on him, without checking who they were lauding. But since he was incarcerated, we were supposed to shed tears on his fate. What’s Nobel prize worth when mass murderers like Winston Churchill and recently the custodian of military industrial complex Barack Obama were rewarded but not someone like Mahatma Gandhi who was nominated in 1937, '38, '39, '47, and '48.

Whatever might be the truth of inevitable politics influencing the Nobel award, one thing remains indisputable, and to those who say it doesn't matter I will respectfully disagree: Alexievich work will suffer unnecessary controversy, a taint, a gloss, an ugly appendix to its otherwise fine body . Rather than help focus on the shames of humanity as encapsulated in the disparate (and desperate) voices gathered in her books, her work would be seen as a fresh attempt to strengthen the anti-Russian sentiment by refreshing the world’s memory about the historical injustice and oppression of the Soviet Empire and its friends, thus vindicating one party and vilifying the other.

I reiterate that this isn't a criticism of Alexievich's work, which might be great in terms of literary merit, humanistic values and social justice, but when there are other powerful states starting more wars and killing more people the world over, for her to acquiesce in using the Nobel springboard to join the chorus of voices directed against her imperium non grata is akin to doing her life's work a disfavour.

Mum always says, There is no virtue in doing the right thing at the wrong time.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Bjorn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: russia, belarus, soviet

The first interview is with the widow of one of the firemen who were sent in on the first day. He'd been shoveling radioactive sludge dressed in only jeans and a t-shirt, his skin turned grey over an afternoon, he literally fell apart within days. She caught cancer from sitting at his bedside as he died.

The second interview is with a psychologist who lived through World War II in the Ukraine and still can't find anything that compares to working in the Zone.

The third is with one of the old women ...more

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May 05, 2016 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a moving, often harrowing, oral history of the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. It begins with the story of the young, pregnant wife of one of the first fire fighters, who responded to the fire at Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and of his slow, untimely death. This is hard to read, but also extremely humbling. The author allows the words of those who lived, and many who still live, in the affected areas to tell their own story. It is a catalogue of trauma – of lives which w This is a moving, often harrowing, oral history of the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. It begins with the story of the young, pregnant wife of one of the first fire fighters, who responded to the fire at Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and of his slow, untimely death. This is hard to read, but also extremely humbling. The author allows the words of those who lived, and many who still live, in the affected areas to tell their own story. It is a catalogue of trauma – of lives which were disturbed by events so cataclysmic that the effects rippled around the whole planet.

Imagine that you are sitting at home, browsing through books on the internet, when you are told that you need to leave your home within the next two hours. You can take only a small amount of items with you – one bag. Yet the sun is still shining and the danger is unseen. Would you be happy to go? Would you refuse to leave? Would you realise that, when you closed your front door, you would never return?

Many of the locals affected by Chernobyl left their lives with no idea they would not go back. They abandoned houses, jobs, pets. Once they arrived at their destination, their luggage was taken – often buried. Houses, villages, were left abandoned, or buried in the earth. Yet people did return. One man actually reclaimed his front door – which his family had always laid the bodies of their dead relatives – snatching it in the night and taking it, like a thief, through the woods. Others did return; finding that relatives rejected them or they were tainted by association with the place they came from. Better to face an unseen enemy than to be exposed to constant taunts and fears. Others fled war zones, or racial intolerance, for the relative peace of this deserted area.

This is a tragic book, but an important one. It tells not only of the tragedy of the disaster, but of the aftermath. Of illness, death, birth defects, the loss of loved ones, the way the disaster was not dealt with effectively and of the heroism of those who went in, trustingly, to try to stop the unbelievable being even worse. One man, who worked at the plant, knew his wife and daughter were out and about in the town. Should he call, and warn them, or take the party line and pretend nothing was wrong? He called – then he went home and called everyone he could contact. Undoubtedly, he saved lives, but so many lives were lost and the effects are certainly still affecting so many people today. I found this a hard read, but I could not put it down.
...more

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Jun 24, 2019 Ines rated it it was amazing

When i finished to read the last page of this book and closed it, a very important phrase came in my mind, it came deep from my soul....
Iudica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta; ab homine iniquo et doloso eripe me (Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy:
deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man) Psalm 42,1
May the dead all be embraced by eternal life, and may the pain of the living one day have justice in front of the Almighty.
There ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 Gabrielle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, russian-soviet, historical, mandatory-reading, reviewed, own-a-copy, penguin-modern-classics, read-in-2019

“In the space of one night we shifted to another place in history.”

“It sometimes felt to me as if I was recording the future.”

I recently spent a weekend riveted in front of the TV, watching the incredible HBO series “Chernobyl”, sitting on the edge of my seat, unglued by the story I saw on the screen, impressed by the flawless cinematography and utterly baffled that a TV show about a nuclear explosion could freak me out way more than any horror movie ever had. I read an interview with the seri “In the space of one night we shifted to another place in history.”

“It sometimes felt to me as if I was recording the future.”

I recently spent a weekend riveted in front of the TV, watching the incredible HBO series “Chernobyl”, sitting on the edge of my seat, unglued by the story I saw on the screen, impressed by the flawless cinematography and utterly baffled that a TV show about a nuclear explosion could freak me out way more than any horror movie ever had. I read an interview with the series creator, Craig Mazin, who said that: "The lesson of “Chernobyl” isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous”. Ouch.

I read that the stories included in the series were largely based on the ones found in Alexievich’s book, which I had seen on my Goodreads feed several times, but was not in any special hurry to get around to until I watched the series. But after those 5 hours of gripping television, my curiosity pushed me (as it often does) all the way to the book store to get my hands on this collection of first-hand accounts from people who were directly impacted by the disaster. While the TV show did an excellent job of explaining what happened, how it happened and how the disaster was managed, “Chernobyl Prayer” comes and brings the very personal stories to light.

Some of those stories are harder to read and more harrowing than any horror novel. Alexievich doesn’t shy away from telling the reader how her interviewees reacted to telling her their stories, how it still affected them – needless to say I had lump in my throat on more than one occasion. The profound empathy to be found in these pages is incredible: Alexievich spoke to people of all walks of life, who were touched by the disaster in many different ways, and the result is a rich spectrum of testimonies, opinions and accounts from widows, liquidators, politicians, scientists, children, former residents of the Zone, people who refused to leave it… Their different perspectives create a patchwork portrait of the disaster, a very complicated event that can be safely said to have shifted history.

I was very struck by the thoughts of an academic turned politician, who mentions that the Soviet Socialist community was a lot like a cross between a prison and a kindergarten, and that its people always expected someone to fix the problem for them, and by those of an agricultural scientist, who pointed out that people were likely to fall for the spiel of snake oil salesman if the pitch was reassuring, and were tricked into believing false science about the Zone and the food grown there - resulting in many cases of illness and death. All this sounds much too contemporary to my taste... And of course, the two accounts from widows that bookend the collection of "monologues" are some of the most heartbreaking testemonies of love I have ever read.

I was only two years old at the time of the Chernobyl explosion, and it wasn’t something my parents ever talked about as far as I can remember, so I knew very little about the disaster. Now I know more than I am entirely comfortable with, if I’m going to be honest. This is basically like reading a Cormac McCarthy novel, except that its actually journalism. An important but difficult book. ...more

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Feb 12, 2021 Chrissie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: life-stages, philo-psychol, medical, love, favorites, ww2, belarus, bio, 2021-read, audible-uk

Journalist Svetlana Alexievich spent ten years working on this book. She interviewed hundreds, individuals from all walks of life, those affected by the worst nuclear reactor accident in history--the Chernobyl meltdown of April 26, 1986. Through this book, they are given the opportunity to have their voices heard, and we are given the opportunity to hear what those who have lived through the Chernobyl meltdown have to say.

I am interested in how historical events affect people’s lives, and this i ...more

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Jan 26, 2014 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russian, antidote-translated, translated, reality-check, nobel-prize-people, 5-star, non-fiction, reviewed, reality-translated, antidote-think-twice-all

There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.

I was born in the age of the known Chernobyl.

Everyone found a justification for themselves, an explanation. I experimented on myself. And basically I found out that the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally.

Who are our fittest.

In Afghanistan death was a normal thing. You could understand it there.

Who are our heroes.

I didn't know we weren't allowed to love here.

Rabbits reabsorb their young w

There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.

I was born in the age of the known Chernobyl.

Everyone found a justification for themselves, an explanation. I experimented on myself. And basically I found out that the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally.

Who are our fittest.

In Afghanistan death was a normal thing. You could understand it there.

Who are our heroes.

I didn't know we weren't allowed to love here.

Rabbits reabsorb their young when the conditions of the environment are unfit for propagation.

I've thought a few times that someday they're going to start hunting the scientists the way they used to hunt the doctors and drown them in the Middle Ages.

The Death of God's a popular topic. How is the Death of Science coming along?

You're a writer, but no book has helped me to understand.

Philo. Love. Sophos. Wisdom. Radiation. Kodoku.

We're all—peddlers of the apocalypse.

We've outpaced our survival. No mutations yet for surviving nuclear winter, but we evolved enough to conceptualize the end of the world a millennium or two ago.

But the era of physics ended at Chernobyl.

One can find ethics in a lab if the expiration date of an engineered fatality is eternal enough.

I'm the product of my time. I'm not a criminal.

Annihilating despair on the generational level's just a social construct, y'know.

It was the equivalent of 350 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. They needed to talk about physics, about the laws of physics, but instead they talked about enemies, about looking for enemies.

The facts may be easier to remember, but the show must go on.

We'll show the whole world! But this is me, this is I. I don't want to die. I'm afraid.

Humans are social creatures.

Even the dead fear these dead.

Humans are hierarchical creatures.

There are over 25 million ethnic Russians outside of Russia—a whole country—and there's nowhere for some of them to go but Chernobyl. All the talk about how the land, the water, the air can kill them sounds like a fairy tale to them. They have their own tale, which is a very old one, and they believe in it—it's about how people kill one another with guns.

-Svetlana Alexievich.

...more

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Apr 15, 2016 Jen/The Tolkien Gal/ジェニファー rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, history, non-fiction

"Is there anything more frightening than people?"

One day I will read this book again.

One day when I can muster the courage to trek back to my tear-stained copy.

Not only is Alexievich a wonderful journalist, but a woman who knows how to talk to people as fellow human beings who pour out their aching hearts onto the pages of these books.

She captures the dialogue wonderfully; she makes you feel as though you were at the Chernobyl Plant when it failed. She also manages to encapsulate such a rich var ...more

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Oct 20, 2020 Jenny Lawson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Devastating. Beautiful. Terrible. It should be required reading, but take it in pieces. It's hard to pick up and hard to put down. ...more

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Apr 27, 2017 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, translated, biography-memoir-letters, svetlana-alexievich, 4-star, own, russia-ukraine

Some historical background
A lone human voice
The author interviews herself on missing history and why Chernobyl calls our view of the world into question

--Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future

A lone human voice
In place of an epilogue

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Apr 07, 2018 Kinga rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pub-1997

The Soviet Union was the worst place for Chernobyl to happen, and for the same reasons that’s why it happened there. The agrarian society suddenly pushed into the atom age, ignorant and stubborn. The corruption, favouring the party line over competence, fixing any problem with a kludge, but via central planning. And the Soviet man ethos of sacrificing oneself on the altar of the country. Russia has always had many souls to spare.
This book is as bad as some of the most horrific apocalyptic/dystop The Soviet Union was the worst place for Chernobyl to happen, and for the same reasons that’s why it happened there. The agrarian society suddenly pushed into the atom age, ignorant and stubborn. The corruption, favouring the party line over competence, fixing any problem with a kludge, but via central planning. And the Soviet man ethos of sacrificing oneself on the altar of the country. Russia has always had many souls to spare.
This book is as bad as some of the most horrific apocalyptic/dystopian novels out there. But of course, unless you’re an actual psychopath, you’re not going to get any titillation from it as you would from fictional disaster scenarios.

Alexievich received a Nobel Prize for literature, even though one might ask if she is actually a writer. We don’t read any of her words, only the words of her subjects. She is a collector of oral histories and her artistry lies in selecting, editing and pacing them. And, one could add, her ability to completely remove herself. She doesn’t even fact-check her subjects, not even in footnotes. Whether what they are saying is true or not, it’s their truth and she lets them say it. She doesn’t ease you in, either. She opens with a story of such a level of horror it left me crying on my morning commute. But what did I expect? It’s a story about a nuclear disaster and the Soviet Union.
Not that it gets easier after the first story, it’s all sadness, horror and disaster with occasional glimpses of melancholy and black humour.

There is a story about a man who was one of ‘liquidators’ (part of the Chernobyl clean-up team). When he returned, he binned all his clothes but his little boy loved his dad’s hat, so he let him keep it. The boy wore it all the time and a few years later he died of brain cancer. There are stories of children who talk about death casually, the Chernobyl children - children born to die. There are stories of earnest heroism of the common people and the calculating cynicism of the officials.
It’s a patchwork picture of people fighting an invisible enemy, the kind the Soviet Russia didn’t prepare them for. The kind that is hard to believe, because everything looks the same, the fields, the forests, the sky, their pets and their gardens, and yet it’s all poisoned, and tainted. It has to be left behind.

READ THIS BOOK NOW. I’M NOT GOING TO ASK YOU TWICE.

(PS. I read it in Polish translation by Jerzy Czech but the English translation is also excellent from what I've seen) ...more

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Feb 04, 2019 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-nonfiction, non-fiction, biographies-and-memoirs

Deeply harrowing, deeply moving, and at times incredibly difficult to read. Alexievich has produced something that goes beyond simply storytelling or presenting the facts about Chernobyl. She’s lived through it with the people she speaks too. She seems able to present their words as if you’re there, experiencing the initial pain and death, ostracism and prejudice along with them.

It’s a masterpiece of writing that packs the initial punch of reliving a young woman’s experiences by her dying husba ...more

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Oct 09, 2015 Dem rated it liked it

Shelves: russian-history

3.5 Stara The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster .

On April 26 1986 the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occured in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quaters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl Presents personal accounts of the tragedy.

I remember here in Ireland in 2002 Iodine tablets designed to counteract radioactive iodine were issued across Ireland amid fears of a terrorist attack on the Sellafield site, which is just 180 kilometres from the Irish coast. The 2002 batch – 14. ...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Pavel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern, non-fiction, russian

CONGRATULATIONS, SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH WITH THE NOBEL WIN! I can't express enough how proud for her and happy I am right now!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Undoubtedly, this was one the most, if not the most powerful text written in Russian language for the last few decades. It's a doc book. Svetlana Aleksievich gave voice to dozens of ordinary people who suffered from Chernobyl disaster. They are telling their stories without auth ...more

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Aug 17, 2016 [P] rated it really liked it

Voices from Chernobyl has been sitting on my bedside table for months, and numerous times I have approached it cautiously as though it were a wild animal. There necessarily exists, between the reader and any given book, a one-sided relationship; I knew that if I were to read Voices I would be taking something from it, without giving anything back, except perhaps a review. It was, however, the something that concerned me. There are, for me at least, certain books that ask of you: do you need this Voices from Chernobyl has been sitting on my bedside table for months, and numerous times I have approached it cautiously as though it were a wild animal. There necessarily exists, between the reader and any given book, a one-sided relationship; I knew that if I were to read Voices I would be taking something from it, without giving anything back, except perhaps a review. It was, however, the something that concerned me. There are, for me at least, certain books that ask of you: do you need this? It is a genuine question. Do I need whatever I am going to take from this? I am aware that there is tremendous suffering in the world, and I can quite easily imagine what the contents of a book such as this will be, so why put myself through it? What, if you frame the question selfishly, is in it for me?

description

[The ferris wheel is part of an amusement park that was scheduled to open on May 1 1986, in Pripya, near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Of course, it never did.]

On April 28th 1986, there were a series of explosions at a nuclear power plant in the city of Pripyat, Ukraine. As a result of this accident, the worst nuclear accident in history, a large part of Europe was contaminated by radiation. Voices from Chernobyl is not, however, a truncated history of the event, nor is it strictly a record of it. It is, instead, a collection of transcribed interviews, mostly monologues. These interviews were conducted by Svetlana Alexievich; the interviewees are people who were in some way affected by the disaster. Therefore, as one would expect, there are many disturbing, often gruesome, details or anecdotes. There are faces ‘all puffed up and swollen’; there are bodies covered in ‘black spots’; there are sheets covered in blood; there is cracking skin, flaking skin; and there are, of course, deaths, many, many deaths.

Yet, as hinted at in my introduction, this sort of thing holds little interest for me. I am not, to quote my own phrase, a literary ambulance chaser. I do not get my reading kicks gorging myself on death, distress and destruction; I don’t need the grisly particulars; I don’t want them in my head. That being exposed to radiation results in disfigurement and pain is not something of which I require proof. I get it; I already got it long before opening this book. This is not to say that I do not understand why the people involved want to share this information. They, as a number of interviewees declare, ‘want to bear witness’; they want, I imagine, to put on record the truth, the unadulterated truth as they witnessed it and experienced it, especially as some of them believe that the Soviet government have tried to cover up the full horror of the event. Their loved ones didn’t just die, they suffered, and they – the government – ‘want us to forget about it.’ And so it is of course important to them that this suffering is acknowledged, in their own minds and memories, and by the world-at-large.

“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one’s ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone – the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there’s no fairness on earth.”

Voices from Chernobyl‘s longest section, or interview, is the opener; told by Lyudmilla Ignatenko, it details the last days of one of the first-response fireman, Vasily. Yet the real focus is on Lyudmilla herself, and her dedication and bravery in refusing to be put off by the authorities from caring for and visiting her husband. It is, in essence, a love story. However, while I certainly do not wish to underplay how emotionally affecting her account is, her actions and her love for her husband are not what make it compelling. She says at the beginning that she doesn’t know what she ought to talk about – ‘about death or about love? Or are they the same?’ And then goes on to show how she came to believe in a connection between these two things.

What I found fascinating about Lyudmilla’s account – and I write this with the utmost respect – is that it reads like fiction, not so much in terms of the content, but the structure. Perhaps it is a consequence of having thought so much about these events, or of having retold them so many times, but one gets the impression that the details have been worked, or moulded, into a narrative, a story, that most satisfies. This is something that plays on my mind a lot, how we – unintentionally or unconsciously – shape and refine our experiences, internally, i.e. in our own heads, and then often via our sharing them with others.

I have noticed myself doing this, as I have worked on my own life stories or memories, and how, over time, I have left bits out, have edited, rewritten etc, have streamlined, until they have maximum impact. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not accusing Lyudmilla, or Alexievich, of cynical manipulation or untruths; I am merely stating that many of the stories in this book impressed me, moved me, by virtue of what they communicated to me about the way that we engage with our memories or experiences, which is to say that we perfect them.

“Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.”

Yet most moving, for me, was the realisation, or the continued proof, of the fact that ‘ordinary people’ are capable of such relentless compassionate wisdom and insight. Hardly a page went by without some line, or image, or idea that almost took my breath away. Pytor S. says: ‘the future is destroying me, not the past’; Nikolai Fomich Kalugin says: ‘Chernobyl is a signal. Everyone turns their head to look at you’; Nadezhda Petrovna Yygovskaya says: ‘we didn’t understand then that the peaceful atom could kill, that man was helpless before the laws of physics.’ These are examples that I picked out by opening the book at random. When I selfishly asked at the beginning of this review: what is in it for me? Why, in other words, should I read Voices from Chernobyl? It is in these lines, these words, and others like them, that I found the answer. ...more

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About Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich

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Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine. Her father was Belarusian and her mother Ukrainian. Alexievich grew up in Belarus, where both her parents were teachers. She studied to be a journalist at the University of Minsk and worked a teacher, journalist and editor. In Minsk she has worked at the newspaper Sel'skaja Gazeta, Alexievich's criticism of the political regimes in the Sovi ...more

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“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone - the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.” — 268 likes

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