Voices from Chernobyl
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 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. 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 innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster---and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
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What Hacker News says
- I also recommend Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, some of people the characters from the book are even present in the TV series.
- Best book of books - 1984
Fiction - Ender's Game
Horror - Voices from Chernobyl. I'm currently read it. I need a pause on every 2-3 pages to refresh my mind.
Biography - "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town". This is only Grisham book that wasn't fiction and based on true event.
- How many people live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone? Svetlana Alexievich interviewed some of “The Zone’s” residents in her excellent book Voices From Chernobyl. It’s not a fun place to live, unless having all your teeth fall out is fun.
- A great - and chilling - read is Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_from_Chernobyl). It had a very strong impact when read in original Russian.
Couple vignettes from my memories of this disaster.
My physicist grandfather lived in Gomel during this time and when this happened during all the May holidays, he barricaded his entire family in his apartment for a month, sealing all the cracks around the windows
My parents skipped sending us from Moscow to Grodno, Belarus for the usual summer holidays because of the direction of the plume (NE) which I remember not liking one little bit. They and grandparents also forbade collection of any morel mushrooms which we used to pick in the forests all the time. I think the mushrooms also became considerably fewer in years past.
- > As of 2005, less than 50 deaths due to illnesses attributed to radiation pollution from the Chernobyl disaster were recorded.
The word "recorded" does a huge amount of obscuring work in that sentence.
I thoroughly recommend the book "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich.
After reading that, a double or triple digit number is simply not credible.
- Knowing many Belarusians, they recommend reading book by Aleksievich which is a written down summary of 500 individual discussions with first hand eye witnesses/victims of the event.
Highly recommended.
