Gold Mine Processing Associate Ben Kreuzer recommends Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich.
Voices from Chernobyl is a collection of interviews done by the Nobel Prize winning Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, which contains a series of interviews done with the survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
These interviews with firefighters, cleanup crewmembers, civilians, and scientists paint a tragic and complex picture of life in an area ravaged by a nuclear meltdown.
The book takes you through the stories of the many people caught up in the worst nuclear accident in history, from the wives and parents of the first firefighters, to the people tasked with burying homes and farmland irradiated by the disaster, to the people who resettled after forced evacuations displaced hundreds of villages.
The juxtaposition of these everyday lives set against the backdrop of a land ravaged by nuclear disaster and governmental corruption and mismanagement is as compelling as it is brutal. This book pulls no punches in showing the aftershock of the disaster and how it tore through the lives of so many people, and how they continue to live in spite of everything.
This book is not an easy read, there were no really happy endings and the disaster’s effects are still being felt in the region today. However it does provide a powerfully personal look into the lives of those affected and the incredible persistence of humanity despite everything.
