Name: Kristen Claiborn's review of Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
Item: Voices from Chernobyl
Rating: 5
Author: Kristen Claiborn

Svetlana Alexievich

The people of Chernobyl talk about their lives before, during, and after the worst nuclear reactor accident in history, which occurred on April 26, 1986 in the Soviet Union in Chernobyl, a disaster that spread radioactive contamination across much of Europe. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Voices from Chernobyl

Samile

Nós somos fatalistas. Não tomamos nenhuma iniciativa, porque acreditamos que tudo será como tiver de ser. Cremos no destino. A nossa história é a seguinte: cada geração viveu a sua guerra. Houve muito samgue derramado. Como podemos ser de outro modo? Somos fatalistas 

Kristen Claiborn

hileahrious

This book meticulously examines human capacity. The capacity to sacrifice people for power and children for honor; to believe in something against all odds, whether it be science, the Party, the land, or love. It is simultaneously a critique of this fatalist mentality and an exaltation of that very dogma that keeps us “sane” amidst the insanity that Chernobyl presented to mankind. I find myself grateful to Alexievich for doing this work and taking the time and pain to gather these stories and tell them, with the small hope that we may some day learn to truly value human life…

I rarely read Nobel-prize winning books. They're usually not my cup of tea. I read to be entertained, and I rarely find these books to be entertaining. However, in my old age (lol), I have discovered I also like to read to learn. I avoided non-fiction for most of my life, but then I grew up (a little) and discovered I like to know things. Don't get me wrong, fiction authors research the dickens out of their books too, so I frequently learn from a good historical romance. 
 I have spent quite a few years of my life being fascinated with Chernobyl. I refer to my birthday as meltdown day not just because I'm getting older and saggy-er, but also because it's the same day Chernobyl blew up. I read as much as I can find about Chernobyl, and I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to this one. 
 I loved this book because Alexievich simply chronicled the stories. She didn't add commentary, she just wrote what the survivors said. It will never cease to blow my mind how corrupt the government of that area was at the time. The cover-ups and denials likely caused the painful deaths of thousands unnecessarily. These personal accounts detail how terrifying and horrible the entire situation was. It is a deeply compelling and personal telling of the event itself and the horrific aftermath. I highly recommend this if you're interested in Chernobyl in any way.

Ashlyn

"These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future."

Voces de Chernobil / Voices from Chernobyl

Natalia Hernandez

Reseña completa en español en mi blog: https://natified.com/2017/02/03/2017-...

Mica

Estoy completamente sin palabras después de terminar este libro. Las historias son completamente desgarradoras, sinceramente no sé qué decir, pero este libro está totalmente recomendado.

Hugo Ahlberg

I watched the HBO and wanted more.
This book was recommended by the writer of the show. Having read the book now, I think the show actually toned down a lot of it! I know that might be hard to believe for some, but some of the stories in this book is just... heart wrenching. Really good though and I can def recommended it if you are looking to learn more about the aftermath.

Bryan Alexander

Voices from Chernobyl* is exactly what the subtitle describes, an oral history of people who lived through the Chernobyl disaster. It is also a powerful, searing, extremely well crafted work of literature. Definitely Nobel level.

Formally, this is an oral history, consisting almost entirely of other people's words. Survivors describe their experiences and reflect on what they mean. Alexievich occasionally adds stage directions ("[weeps]", "[falls silent]", "[becomes incomprehensible]"). More powerfully she organizes the selections thematically and poetically, based on statements: "A Whole Life Written on Doors", "About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When He Saw Christ Fall". Some shorter selections appear synthesized into choruses: People's Chorus, Children's Chorus, etc.

The book begins with a prologue, "A Solitary Human Voice." It's a widow's statement, and a shriek from hell. Lyudmilla Ignatenko describes her husband's rush into the disaster, followed by his rapid descent into literal bodily disintegration and agonized death. These are scenes of frantic desperation, panic, ignorance, and fierce love. This one chapter is hard to read without tearing up or swearing - and it's just Alexievich's opening.

Then on we go, listening to voices of historians, soldiers, liquidators (people "volunteered" to work in cleanup), homesteaders ("resettlers", some folks moved to the exclusion zone to live (!)), scientists, a homeless man, fathers, children, mothers, engineers, widows and widowers. Some Goodreads reviews complain that these voices blend; I disagree strongly. Each has a clear voice, nicely realized by the author. Valentin Borisevitch, for example, fairly exalts with his memories of national and scientific pride (179), while Sergei Sobolev's deep, bitter sadness nearly chews a hole through the pages (129-138).

Soviet and Russian pasts loom large, especially WWII. Time and again characters (speakers, more precisely) compare the present to what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War, from partisan warfare to the epic siege of Leningrad. ("We lived through the Blockade. There can't be anything worse than that." (120)) People also recall Stalin's purges; several times, it seems to be enough to utter the date 1937 to evoke nightmares (164). The Soviet authorities and some people considered addressing Chernobyl to be a heroic act at a historical level.

Indeed, Voices from Chernobyl is (among other things) an excellent window into a period of Soviet and post-Soviet history. We see people revising and rethinking what they experienced before the atomic disaster. Religion suddenly looms large, with some invoking God or quoting Christian authors. Others struggle to determine their new identity in a post-USSR age. As one fumes, "On our passports... it says 'Russian,' but weren't not Russian. We're Soviet! But that country - where I was born - no longer exists." (63-4) I gather this is the subject of another of the Alexievich's books.

Alexievich carefully mentions new (at least to the foreign reader) words and phrases. Chernobyl survivors and veterans are "walking ashes" (98). Liquidators are the "volunteers" hurled in for cleanup. Dosimetrists alone know the truth about radiation doses (159). Soldiers are "green robots", green for the uniform color, robots because actual robots broke down in the high radiation levels (132).

There are scenes of surrealism and horror. One college instructor describes a dreamlike landscape in moonlight, scraped clear of irradiated soil, then imagines new lifeforms haunting it (85). A collection of rumors and urban legends imagines new forms of blood, animals behaving weirdly, subterranean forces, conspiracies, population relocations (back to Soviet history) (128-9). The opening and closing stories depict deaths quite terrible, with living bodies mutating and disintegrating.

And there are the jokes. Dark, Russian humor. Clever soldiers trick old women into giving them free vodka by pretending to be scientists. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. "Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!" Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. "Don't worry!" she says. "They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss." (76)

This is also a fairly gynocentric book. Women's voices are very important, and I think constitute the majority of the text. Widows open and close the work.

Obviously I recommend this for every reader.

*"Voices"? I think the title is Чернобыльская молитва, which I'd translate as Chernobyl Prayers. The last three sentences (before the author's final note) address this:We'll wait for him together. I'll read my Chernobyl prayer in whisper. You see, he looks at the world with the eyes of a child. (233)

Oliver Firmenich

Mat Connor

Cyrus Yochim

Daria Kornilova 

mimi

Pamela Koh

The people of Chernobyl talk about their lives before, during, and after the worst nuclear reactor accident in history which occurred on April 26, 1986 in Chernobyl.

Kristen Claiborn &
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

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