Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Macmillan, Apr 18, 2006 - History - 236 pages
On April 25, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl. Until now, all of the books published in English focused on the facts, names, and data. Voices from Chernobyl presents first-hand accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they lived through. In order to give a voice to their experiences, Svetlana Alexievich--a journalist by trade--interviewed hundreds of people who had been affected by the meltdown. From innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucial document of what happened and how people reacted to it. Alexievich presents these interviews in monologue form, giving readers a harrowing inside view into the minds of the affected people untempered by government spin, accusations, or judgements, leaving the reader with just the life-shattering pain of living through such an event and its aftermath.
 

Contents

Historical Notes
1
THE LAND OF THE DEAD
25
About a Whole Life Written Down on Doors
31
About What Radiation Looks Like
51
About Repentance
64
THE LAND OF THE LIVING
81
About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When
86
About a Single Bullet
92
Peoples Chorus
138
AMAZED BY SADNESS
151
About Taking Measurements
161
About Answers
170
About Expensive Salami
181
About the Shadow of Death
189
About Political Strategy
195
By a Defender of the Soviet Government
201

About How We Cant Live Without Chekhov and Tolstoy
100
A Scream
114
About Writing Chernobyl
123
About Lies and Truths
129
About Why We Love Chernobyl
213
A Solitary Human Voice
221
In Place of an Epilogue
235
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About the author (2006)

Svetlana Alexievich was born in Stanislav, Ukraine, Soviet Union on May 31, 1948. She became a journalist and wrote narratives from interviews with witnesses to events such as World War II, the Soviet-Afghan war, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster. Her books include Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War and War's Unwomanly Face. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2005 for Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. Keith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men, as well as the editor of Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager and Kirill Medvedev's It's No Good: Poems, Essays, Manifestoes.

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