Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

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.

We came home. I took off all the clothes that I’d 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.

We’ll still try to imagine something that looks like our own lives now. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.