Customer Reviews

Voices from Chernobyl (Lannan Selection)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
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This book is a translation of interviews with survivors 10 years after Chernobyl. The first-person descriptions of living in the "Zone" after the disaster, and the implications of living in radioactivity is chilling and compelling. The book is full of heartbreaking stories of Russian people who survived WWII but then were confronted with another disaster of unbelievable magnitude. I absolutely couldn't put this book down, and feel that it should be promoted as one of the best books of the year. As we are now approaching the 20th anniversary of this event, I keep wondering how many of those people interviewed in 1996 are still alive. This book deserves a huge audience!

Occasionally I'll read first-hand accounts about human catastrophes in the modern world, such as Sudan or Rwanda or Katrina, because it offers a window into what I as a middle class American normally would never see or experience, hopefully making me a better and wiser person without becoming numb or a "dark tourist". Books are more subtle and rich than film and more rewarding in the end.

As an oral history this is a frightening experience (the term "experience" emphasized). Chernobyl has been largely hushed up and kept quiet, the scope of it is worse than most know or understand (occasionally we hear a few hundred or thousand people died and certain cancers are slightly up, don't believe it, much worse). Only about %5 of the nuclear material escaped so it was a minor accident on the scale of things. There is a %50 chance of another meltdown happening elsewhere in the world over the next 40 years (sourced in book). Had Chernobyl been a full meltdown much of Europe would be dieing off as we speak. 16 more Chernobyl-type reactors are still in operation (14 in Russia). As Alexievich says in her epitaph: "These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future."

The disaster of Chernobyl is still going today, it never ended, it is like AIDS - it just keeps getting worse, there is no cure for radiation which lasts 100s of 1000s of years. The radiated material is finding its way outside of the "Zone" and spreading slowly around the world. Down the rivers into the seas, blown on dust, carried out by hand by bandits in the form of trucks and TV's and scrap metal sold to Asian scrap metal firms which build the goods we buy, grown in food and sold on the world market. I put this book down thinking two things: where can I buy a gieger counter and where can I buy iodine.

Alexievic is a fascinating person her books published around the world in over 19 languages; translated authors don't get big billing in the USA but she is a world-class author and pretty well known in Europe. The Stalinst-Soviet style government of Belorussia (her home country) is not sympathetic to independent journalists (they end up dead). She has a fairly detailed personal website (I can't post links on Amazon but Google search on her name).

READ THIS BOOK! First, I am a retired career military officer and veteran combat fighter pilot who once flew aircraft armed with nuclear weapons. This compilation of personal histories is heart-wrenching and soul-searching. The mostly free and honest recitations are emotionally searing. The first chapter brought tears to my eyes before I was half-through. These histories are also an indictment of the cover-your-tail, follow the party line, system of government and a stern warning that nuclear power must be under the closest of controls - forever. I finished the book about 1100PM but was unable to fall asleep until after 0130AM. I am, after reading this book, totally against the commercial use of atomic energy since the drive for profit must inevitably result in lowering of standards in maintenance and operational control as has already been manifested in, say, Three-Mile Island. I only wish I had the funds to send a copy of this book to every Congressperson. George Soros, are you there?
Walter E. Bjorneby, Lt/Col, USAF (Ret)

This book is a punch in the gut. There's no nicer way to say it. It's downright devastating. It's something that every single person should read. Even if you only know Chernobyl vaguely, two things are made painfully apparent by this book: whatever you've read about Chernobyl in the past has probably grossly underestimated the magnitude of the disaster; and the death and injury toll from the accident hasn't stopped yet. Not by a long shot.

In her quest to expose the human cost of Chernobyl, journalist Svetlana Alexievich presents three years' worth of interviews with a wide cross-section of individuals. Unlike most books about Chernobyl, the focus is on the people of Belarus, who were not evacuated as quickly as their southern neighbors in Ukraine. The breadth of the author's research is astounding. The reader meets the widow of one of the first responders to the Chernobyl accident, a young firefighter who arrived at the nuclear plant clad only in his street clothes and ended up suffering an agonizing death in a Moscow radiation ward only 14 days later. There are children who were evacuated from surrounding cities and parents of children who have died from radiation-related illnesses. There's a respected scientist who, learning of the Chernobyl disaster, made frantic calls to all the Soviet brass in Minsk he could think of, only to be ignored. There are elderly men and women who have returned to the Exclusion Zone to live in solitude, eating radioactive crops. There are liquidators who toiled for months shoring up the reactor's ruins, only to receive a medal, a certificate and a serious or terminal illness as thanks. There's even an ex-Soviet official who tries to justify the cover-ups surrounding the Chernobyl crisis.

No angle is ignored, and no detail, no matter how horrifying, is politely edited out. Alexievich allows her subjects to tell their stories honestly and frankly. Voices from Chernobyl presents a profound moment of truth for a situation that, for 20 years, has been seeped in denial and secrecy. Very highly recommended.

says an evacuee in Voices of Chernobyl, an absolutely riveting collection of oral histories of people from all walks of life, affected for eternity by the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor on April 26, 1986. "A Solitary Human Voice," the prologue, recounted by a woman whose husband was one of the first on the scene as a firefighter, will lure you in and, once there, you'll feel compelled to continue to the end, painful as it may be. She's pregnant, newly married and very much in love when she hears the news. The doctors and nurses and try to no avail to keep her away from her husband once he's done his duty at the plant and then sent to a special hospital in Moscow for victims of radiation poisoning, along with six other firemen. Her baby dies. Her husband dies, horribly, the last of the seven of his crew.

These stories of "Chernobylites," the stigmatized and disdained victims of the accident, share a common theme. The government was neither truthful nor forthcoming about the level of danger that those living near the area of the Chernobyl plant experienced. They did not provide the victims with information on treatment in a timely manner, because it would have meant admitting that a horrible accident had actually occurred. Those who tried to warn others of the danger were silenced or mocked. Men were sent to clean up the site and were given extra pay in exchange, ultimately, for their lives. Because people could not see the radiation, they kept on eating contaminated food, breathing contaminated air, using contaminated clothing and living (approximately 2.1 million people) on contaminated land. Immediately afterwards, men were sent to kill the domestic animals, evacuate the people and, using shovels and minimal protective gear, remove the contaminated soil. Although precautions were recommended, like minimizing time spent in contaminated areas, tracking and limiting the amount of radiation a person was exposed to, and lining pits dug to dump the contaminated soil to prevent contamination of the groundwater, radiation detectors, even when used, rarely worked and, if they did, improperly, and liners were not typically used, almost ensuring that aquifers would become contaminated. People were encouraged not to have children, thus thousands of abortions were performed. Even those children born without birth defects spent much of their shortened lives in hospitals, suffering from radiation exposure-related diseases. Yet, thousands returned home and, willingly ate, drank, lived and live a life of everlasting contamination.

This was not the book I was looking for but it was the book I read. Far from an historical recreation of the disaster, Voices from Chernobyl is a personal confessional, a lyric documentation of intense human emotions. Svetlana Alexiech presents each story without comment or judgement. It is a stream of conscoiusness, profoundly moving in the face of this 1986 nuclear disaster, the gross incompetence of the Soviet Government and failure to contain the radioactive contamination. The stories are of those who stayed, those who came to help, those who died and those who survived. Haunting, moving, emotional, revealing, shocking, sad and inspirational. This book will stay with you long after the last page is turned.

Mankind can promote technology and advancement in the name of science and at the same time treat his fellow humans with contempt and dishonesty in this way. How is that possible? It can only be described as Satanic. Mankind dominating man to his own injury. The stories from these innocent bystanders have touched my heart. I have never cried after reading a book before this one. The first hand accounts of this terrible accident transports you to the towns, villages and families, like our own, which were and are still effected. The "Voices From Chernobyl" will echo in my head as I think of the place I live and look ahead to the future of my family. These people have touched my soul and only amplify the fact in my mind that the desire to live peaceful and happy lives belongs to everyone and no one has the right to foolishly remove that by disturbing the simple silent harmonies that are so fragile and exist within our world. I understand what these people really had to go through now. Thank you Svetlana Alexievich. An excellent book!

This is hands down the best personal account book I have read. To hear from the people who actual lived through the evacuation, the residents, the liquidators, the children of Chernobyl, is incredibly moving. If you are looking for a book with stories from the people who had to leave their homes behind, from the people who cleaned up the wreckage, this is the book for you. I have actually read through this book 3 times now.

This is a must read for anyone and everyone. It brings to life the realities of a horrible disaster. It shows us that the rest of world has bigger problems than we do. Yet, it shows that the rest of the world has the same souls as we do. they love, they hurt, they cry, they live their lives and just try to get by. GET THIS BOOK.

This latter part of this book is a gut-wrenching, incredible oral history of the victims and survivors and family members of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986, and the "author" deserves credit for a tremendous amount of work over three years gathering and recording these important personal stories for history.

However, the book needed some background about the disaster and some explanation of what actually occurred in the disaster to put all the stories into perspective. It also could benefit from some brief paragraphs explaining some of the things the survivors mention -- I was confused about times and dates and some of the terminology.

And the first few sections are very confusing because the dialog makes no sense. It would have been better paraphrased. I almost gave up reading this book but I'm glad I didn't because the second half stories are much more coherent and compelling.

I also would have appreciated having the ages of the narrators along with their names and affiliation before each story, not at the end.