Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich is a truly moving work. Svetlana most deservingly won the 2015 Nobel Prize and her work on the lives impacted by the Chernobyl accident is a deeply moving read.
My previous reads, especially Chernobyl 01:23:40 and Midnight in Chernobyl acknowledge Svetlana’s powerful work.
I certainly wish one could read Voices from Chernobyl and not be affected by the horrors of the world’s worst nuclear accident. However her powerful writing makes this all but impossible.
This book’s storytelling also justifies her Nobel award. The interviews of innocent citizens certainly reminds me of reading The Pentagon Papers. The horrors so demoralizing I had to stop reading such horrific details of war for almost one month. That same impact begins especially within the opening chapters.
Svetlana begins the reader’s nightmare journey with Fireman Vasily Ignatenko and his wife Lyudmilla. The horrors of acute radiation poising above all, does not discriminate. Thus all those innocent firemen worked for over an hour trying to extinguish the exposed nuclear core fires.
Vasily is a proud, strikingly handsome young firefighter. His unit was the first to arrive at reactor number 4, and they all walked right into the exposed core without protective gear. With an exposed core radiation level at 30,000 roentgen per hour Vasily and his fellow firefighters unknowingly found themselves exposed to 5,600 years worth of radiation in just 48 seconds.