A profound account of the experiences of people in Belarus to the accident and aftermath at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. This book is a really good example of how oral history can be used to capture stories that professional historians would miss. Read it. ( )

Impressionant relat del que va passar a Txornòbil i com ho va viure la gent. ( )

This is a difficult book to read. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop thinking about the stories these people told, their memories, their life and the horrible suffering after the disaster. “There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.” ( )

A harrowing collection of interviews - in the form of monologues - by people connected with the Chenobyl disaster, from the widows of those involved in the cleanup, to an official who participated in the cover-up, people who moved to the restricted area after the disaster to escape genocide elsewhere, one of the hunters tasked with killing animals within the zone, and those who were children at the time. They make clear the ignorance of radiation and thus the terrible danger of all concerned due to the culture of secrecy and cover up in the Soviet Union. This was compounded by the corruption at all levels which led to vast amounts of radioactive goods and food being taken out of the zone and sold for profit in areas that hadn't been evacuated.

The book doesn't set out to describe the chronological timeline of the disaster or the explanation of why it happened. But it forms a companion volume to 'Midnight at Chenobyl' which provides all those and which I read quite recently. The present volume is the personal stories in their own words and a grim tale it makes. A book that will definitely be worth another read, though for me it is surprisingly short given the wealth of material and the hundreds of interviews which we're told the author (really an editor) carried out. Therefore I'm awarding it 4 stars. ( )

Tschernobyl. Eine Chronik der Zukunft ist ein Buch der Nobelpreisträgerin Swetlana Alexandrowna Alexijewitsch.[1][2] Alexijewitsch lebte 1986 zur Zeit der Katastrophe von Tschernobyl als Journalistin in Minsk, der Hauptstadt von Weißrussland. (Damals war Weißrussland als Weißrussische Sozialistische Sowjetrepublik Teil der Sowjetunion.)
Hintergrund:
Alexijewitsch interviewte über einen Zeitraum von 10 Jahren mehr als 500 Augenzeugen, darunter Feuerwehrleute, Liquidatoren (Mitglieder des Cleanup-Teams), Politiker, Ärzte, Physiker und einfache Bürger. Das Buch bezieht sich auf die psychologische und persönliche Tragödie des Unfalls von Tschernobyl, beschreibt die Erfahrungen von Individuen und wie die Katastrophe ihr Leben beeinflusst hat. (Wikipedia)