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    Voices from Chernobyl
    Voices from Chernobyl
    Voices from Chernobyl
    Ebook293 pages4 hours

    Voices from Chernobyl

    By Svetlana Alexievich

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award A journalist by trade, who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book, presents personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986, and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they still live with. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

    Editor's Note

    Trying recollections…

    An oral history about the worst nuclear disaster in history from a Nobel Prize in Literature winner. The devastation may have officially occurred April 26, 1986, but it’s an ongoing catastrophe, with people experiencing lingering health problems and land made uninhabitable.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDalkey Archive Press
    Release dateOct 16, 2015
    ISBN9781943150991
    Voices from Chernobyl
    Author

    Svetlana Alexievich

    Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankovsk in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own non-fiction genre which brings together a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Boys in Zinc (1991), Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and Second-hand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for ‘her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time’.

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    Reviews for Voices from Chernobyl

    4.5/5

    34 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It's a brilliant book - the witnesses to the events at Chernobyl and its aftermath speak of what happened to them in their own words, although I have to wonder if Ms. Alexeievich edited some statements to make them more coherent. She seems to have chosen the statements from people who are the most philosophical, and therefore the most interesting. I should have realized before now how much the disaster still plagues Ukraine and Belarus and will plague them for centuries, how badly the Soviet Government handled the situation, and how much it eventually contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely profound. So many of the stories described Chernobyl as this strange combination of beauty and horror. This book is the same.
    • 5/5
      The most haunting book I’ve ever read. Alexievich is a master.
    • 5/5
      The raw truth (and it is raw and heartbreaking) of the dead and survivors of the aftermath of the Chernobyl power station disaster. The soviet people, with incredible bravery and sacrifice, saved Europe from a much worse disaster by putting out the fires and plugging the exposed reactor (almost by hand to hand combat with it). As with the 'great war', the dead point accusing fingers at the world for this disaster.
    • 5/5
      ......................................" ...no one knows what Chernobyl is.".....Valentina Panasevich, wife of a liquidator."I used to think I could understand everything and express everything."........Svetlana Aleksievich, AuthorAlmost anything I could say would not do this powerful book justice.It needs to be read.......................................
    • 5/5
      This book collects the words of people whose lives were affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster: People who were evacuated. People who weren't evacuated. People who, seeking refuge from war and having nowhere else to go, moved into contaminated areas abandoned by everyone else. Soldiers who were sent in, inadequately protected, to clean up afterward. Family members of people afflicted by radiation poisoning, or birth defects, or cancer. Scientists who tried to warn people, and one who lives with the shame of having trusted the authorities and looked the other way. There are long, rambling stories and short, bitter outbursts. Some are sophisticated and philosophical, others inarticulately emotional. Many of the most personal narratives are heartbreaking and horrifying, but, taken all together, they also paint an enlightening portrait of what it was like to be a citizen of the Soviet Union in 1986, and of the all too fallible ways in which human beings and human institutions can react to disasters that they don't fully understand. It's a painful book to read, but a very worthwhile one, and the way that Alexievich presents these transcripts, without context or comment, somehow just makes them all the more powerful.
    • 4/5
      This book was fascinating. I have seen pictures and watched television shows on Chernobyl but actually reading the words spoken by true survivors was heart-wrenching. I think that this book is a very vivid glimpse into the lives of the people who actually lived through this time. I'm too young to remember when this happened but it seems like it was something that was hushed up to the world and also to the Russian people themselves. The people who were sent in to deal with the aftermath were completely unprepared for a disaster of that magnitude. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Chernobyl. It's worth the read.
    • 4/5
      This was a very good book. Keep in mind that it was not intended to give you the technical details and big picture of what happened. You should probably know something about Chernobyl before reading this book.This book tells the story through short interviews with different people who experienced many aspects of the aftermath.A few powerful themes ran through the book:1. The deeply personal tragedy of lost spouses, children, lovers, friends, and neighbors. 2. The ineptness, corruptness, and cruelty of the Soviet regime. You pick this up through the various interviews.3. The ordinary heroism of the young men who went to fight the fire or into the Zone to do what they were ordered to do. You always had a sense that these were good people sent in to help. And, as the reader, you know what danger they were getting into.4. Link to war. In the late 80's there were still a fair number of people who had lived through the horrors of World War II. The similarities were haunting at times, but what struck me was the fact that these people now had another horror to deal with.5. The strangeness of this tragedy. It is indirectly pointed out that in war, it is pretty clear that bombs are exploding and guns blazing. Here, there is what seems like an ordinary fire, but otherwise, a peaceful place. In the interviews, you hear people of all walks of life talking about all the details of radiation. It starts to sink in that so many people should not have to know about these kinds of things. Especially tragic was the older farmers who simply could not leave the land and had no where to go even if they wanted to get away from the radiation.This book is touching.
    • 3/5
      "Voices From Chernobyl" is a true story told by people who experienced and lived through the times of Chernobyl themselves. It contains a collection of monologues which describe how truly painful and frustrating these times were. I think a lot of the emotional texture was lost in the translation, and I found many monologues to be quite similar, because I can only remember a few parts of some. However, you do realise how secretive and horrific this was for them - many people compared it to war.

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    Voices from Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich

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