"Voices From Chernobyl" is a true story told by people who experienced and lived through the times of Chernobyl themselves. It contains a collection of monologues which describe how truly painful and frustrating these times were.
I think a lot of the emotional texture was lost in the translation, and I found many monologues to be quite similar, because I can only remember a few parts of some. However, you do realise how secretive and horrific this was for them - many people compared it to war. ( )

"Voices from Chernobyl" is a quiet mournful scream of apocalyptic horror. Ten years after the nuclear disaster, Svetlana Alexievich traveled through rural Russia and documented survivor's memories of the Chernobyl catastrophe as it occurred, during the days immediately following, and the ongoing aftermath. The book contains comments from people of all walks of life; from uneducated peasant farmers to Russia's top nuclear scientists. It is finally revealed to the world that the nuclear reactor burned for 10 days emitting a radioactive cloud that hovered over the city of Belarus, home of more than 2 million people. The Soviet bureaucracy knew this and kept it secret. Their only concern was the "communist party discipline"....following orders.....blind obedience....cover your ass and prevent a panic at all cost. The government sent thousands of men: firemen, liquidators, inspectors, and clean up crews, into the zone, a 30 kilometer perimiter around Chernobyl, where levels of radiation were hundreds of times more than could be endured by a human being. These heroic men served their country unprepared for the task and unprotected. Attempts to evacuate the general population of Belarus were briefly mentioned, but as time elapsed, abandoned. And the crisis is not over....it will never end. A large portion of Russia is contaminated forever, and yet over 2 million people still live on this poisoned land. The result : death, suicide, mental retardation, neurological disorders, genetic mutations, and cancer. This is one of the most emotionally charged narratives I have ever read. What words could describe it? Obscene sadness, raw anger, painful despair. I could go on and on......but I've said enough. Read this book! ( )

powerful accounts. made me choke up a few times. ive passed this book onto 3 people and all three have loved it. paints a portrait of the russian mindset of the time. read in conjunction with several other cold war books. potent anti-nuclear power memoirs. ( )

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 of Chernobyl 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 http://alexievich.info/ (click on English). ( )