by Keith Gessen, Swietłana Aleksijewicz
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...
We don't need the destruction of entire cities to know what it's like to survive a catastrophe. Whenever we lose someone we love deeply we experience the end of the world as we know it. The central idea of the story is not merely that the apocalypse is coming, but that it's coming for you. And there...
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...
The Russian 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 Cher...
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 tab...
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