Accident: A Day's News

A surprisingly wide-ranging little book, describing the events of a single, beautiful spring day in 1986 in rural Mecklenburg, with the invisible cloud of fall-out from Chernobyl menacing the countryside of northern Europe and the narrator's brother undergoing brain surgery in Berlin. Whilst Wolf ranges over every conceivable subject-area from Anthropology to Zoology in a little over a hundred pages, it doesn't feel rushed, but the sense of invisible menace is always there, building up to the key phrase from Heart of Darkness in the last chapter: "And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth".
Twenty-five years on, the most startling things about this book for me were, firstly, the extent to which I'd forgotten how scared show more we really were at the time of Chernobyl (particularly in Germany); secondly, my totally unreasonable expectation that Wolf would make some reference to the imminent collapse of the Workers'-and-Peasants' State. Naturally, she couldn't know that the Berlin Wall would fall in three years' time, and that the consequences of this would drive out all thoughts of radioactivity, acid rain and the imminent end of the world from the minds of the great majority of Germans. show less

"What’s gone is gone; the older we get, the more we learn to respect and fear the inexorability of time. One can rack one’s brains in search of justifications for things left undone, such as: but instead of that, I worked, I wrote. No use. The omission stakes its claim in the form of guilt and it is not to be undone..."

A German writer is in a town in Mecklenburg thinking about the brain surgery her brother is undergoing while also contemplating the repercussions of the Chernobyl disaster that has just happened. We go through her mind's observations, meanderings, uncertainties and fears for a day.

It's been thirty four years since the Chernobyl disaster, time has made it a distant event but this book by Christa Wolf, published a few show more years after it happened, brings the fears following its happening fresh in one's mind. I've come to expect Christa Wolf books to be difficult, taking effort, that has so far, always been rewarded. This book was similar as Wolf explores the destructiveness of human nature. A good read. show less

When I picked up this novel, I had no idea what to expect.
It ended up being a novel that was interesting on one hand: reading about that day when Tsjernobyl happened. And the other major thing that occupies the main character's thoughts.

On the other hand I disliked the book, just because it small a book about thoughts. I got exhausted reading like my brain is working (most of the time), even though the brain & thoughts of this character were more organized than mine.
It was not a bad book, the form was well chosen, especially because it's a thin book. But it's also not a kind of book I'd be going back to soon.

Verslag van de dagen die volgden op de kernramp in Tsjernobyl.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6624164

Im Frühling 1986, auf dem mecklenburgischen Land, sind die Blüten an den Kirschbäumen förmlich explodiert – aber das Wort vom Explodieren wagt man nicht einmal mehr zu denken, seit die Nachricht sich verbreitet: Im Kernreaktor von Tschernobyl hat eine Explosion stattgefunden. Und während die Erzählerin den stündlichen Warnungen im Radio lauscht, muß sich ihr Bruder einer riskanten Gehirnoperation unterziehen. Zwei Störfälle, eine kollektive und eine individuelle Katastrophe, an einem Tag: Christa Wolfs Erzählung schildert den Einbruch des Unfaßbaren in das menschliche Leben, entfesselte Kräfte, über die wir keine Kontrolle mehr haben.
Quelle: Amazon.de