A review by amw207
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexiévich

5.0

I'm just getting around to writing a review for this, but I think it's a book you have to sit with and absorb for a while before putting into words how you feel. I'm a huge fan of firsthand accounts. I personally think they're the best way to learn about disasters such as Chernobyl. People will argue (with good reason) that anecdotes are faulty. Sure, trauma does change how you remember things and you may misinterpret. However, in the case of Chernobyl, I think most of these accounts corroborate one another. In particular, they highlight the often underestimated death toll as well as the trauma that still lingers decades later. I feel like people make light of Chernobyl because the death toll and destruction wasn't immediately apparent and devastating. But these stories highlight just how affected the citizens of Pripyat, the greater exclusion zone, and Eastern Europe in general were by the explosion.
I loved the colloquial yet poetic way the translation presents the stories. Russian translation, at least to me, always seems so perfect, as if it was written and rewritten. But people really just speak like that. And it makes their stories all the more jarring to hear.