Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (Lannan Selection)

by Svetlana Alexievich

Keith Gessen (Translator)

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
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."

• ISBN10: 0312425848
• ISBN13: 9780312425845
• Publish Date: 18 April 2006 (first published 28 June 2005)
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 236
• Language: English

Reviews

[lex6819]

Fascinating and heartbreaking true stories of surviving Chernobyl, in the words of the survivors themselves. What's even more chilling than what they went through, is the fact that the sarcophagus over the reactor has cracks in it and could fail, leading to an even worse nuclear disaster than the one in the 80s. Chernobyl is both a historical event and an ongoing event, and a huge global threat to the future.

[pamela]

A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl when I moved to Cyprus. I’d read amazing things about it, especially since it was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015, but for some reason, it wasn’t printed in the UK at the time. I worked for a book shop, and we could only get it via print on demand publishers that year. My first day out in Cyprus, I walked into a book shop, and there it was, sitting right on the shelf. A real, paperback copy! I bought it immediately, and then life got in the way, and I forgot to read it.

As much as I hate to say when SKY UK’s Chernobyl aired, I remembered I had this sitting on my shelf, and I finally dusted it off and started to read, before I watched any of the series. I’m so glad I did because so many of the oral histories recounted in Voices from Chernobyl influenced the narrative of the series – and as confronting as the series was, I’m not ashamed to say that I cried in public, tears streaming down my face reading those histories in the words of those who experienced them. Every emotion was represented. There was sadness, hope, anger, resignation…it was an emotional roller coaster that left me weeping at the tragedy of it all.

Soldiers came for us in cars. I thought the war had started. They were saying these things: “deactivation,” “isotopes.” One soldier was chasing after a cat. The dosimeter was working on the cat like an automatic: click, click. A boy and a girl were chasing the cat, too. The boy was all right, but the girl kept crying, “I won’t give him up!” She was yelling: “Run away, run little girl!” But the soldier had a big plastic bag.

I was amazed at the skill Alexievich showed in getting to the emotional heart of her subjects. She conveyed their voices with precision and depth. She began and ended the collection with the two most gut-wrenching tales – tales of wives who lost their husbands and the pain they had to endure. It drew me in and ensured that all these stories would linger in my mind, quite possibly for the rest of my life.

It’s easy to look at stories from history and forget that they happened to real people. Some stories are so fantastical, and take on such an air of mythology that they become almost hyper-real. We forget to step back and really think about why, how, and to whom these events occurred. Voices from Chernobyl reminds us that Chernobyl is much more than a thrill-seeker’s theme park. It’s a place where lives were lived, memories were made, and people destroyed.

The sparrows disappeared from our town in the first year after the accident. They were lying around everywhere – in the yards, on the asphalt. They’d be raked up and taken away in the containers with the leaves. They didn’t let people burn the leaves that year, because they were radioactive, so they buried the leaves.

The sparrows came back two years later. We were so happy, we were calling to each other: “I saw a sparrow yesterday! They’re back.”

The May bugs also disappeared, and they haven’t come back. Maybe they’ll come back in a hundred years or a thousand. That’s what our teacher says. I won’t see them.

Voices from Chernobyl offers very little context or background. This works in its favour. The stories speak for themselves. The reality is, the people telling the stories were just as much in the dark (in fact, more so!) than a reader would be, and so it makes it all the more impactful to hear their stories without comment.

Voices from Chernobyl isn’t a book about politics or global impact. It’s an intimate monologue, recording the life of the citizens who were most deeply affected by the Chernobyl disaster. If you don’t shed a tear reading some of these accounts, you don’t have a heart. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.