Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future
by:
Swietłana Aleksijewicz (author)
Arch Tait (translator)
Anna Gunin (translator)
The startling history of the Chernobyl disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2015 - A new translation based on the revised text - On 26 April 1986, at 1.23am, a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation...
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The startling history of the Chernobyl disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2015
- A new translation based on the revised text -
On 26 April 1986, at 1.23am, a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love. A chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you to forget.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780241270530 (0241270537)
Publish date: 2016-04-21
Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics / Penguin Books Ltd
Pages no: 294
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Literature,
Cultural,
Science,
Environment,
Russia,
Oral History,
Ukraine
I read this after watching the HBO mini series about the disaster. If you have seen it, the firefighter’s wife, the one who follows her husband, her account opens this collection of oral histories. It pretty sets the stage for the rest of the history that follows. It is not easy reading. There are b...
I went into the Zone from the very beginning. I remember stopping in a village being struck by the silence. No birds, nothing. You walk down a street … silence. Well, of course, I knew all the cottages were lifeless, that there were no people because they had all left, but everything around had fall...
Voices from Chernobyl is a collection of first person accounts from survivors of the Chernobyl accident. The people Alexievich interviewed are not scientists or politicians, they are soldiers, farmers, and school teachers. Often the survivors describe the events around Chernobyl as being like a war,...
An excellent collection of oral histories. And an important collection of oral histories. Alexievich interviewed many people affected by Chernobyl—evacuated residents, re-settlers (largely the elderly who lived in the area their entire lives and ethnic Russians fleeing southern/eastern former USSR s...
Honestly, I have no words, but fortunately she does. This is a must read, a statement I do not make lightly. Yes, it will depress you at times. Yes, you will weep. But to avoid is to turn yet another blind eye to not just history, but to reality, to humanity, and to forever hide oneself from the wor...
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