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Chernobyl Prayer

bySvetlana Alexievich, Anna Gunin (Translator), Arch Tait (Translator)

Voices from Chernobyl

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Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

'Desperately important and impossible to put down. It is timeless. . . what shines clear from the testimonies is love - love which can make you do the most spectacular things ' Sheena Patel, Observer

'- A new translation of Voices from Chernobyl based on the revised version -

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

A chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you to forget.

'Beautifully written. . . heart-breaking' - Arundhati Roy, Elle

'One of the most humane and terrifying books I've ever read' - Helen Simpson, Observer

About the series

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Absolutely essential and heartbreaking reading. There's a reason Ms. Alexievich won a Nobel Prize

Craig Mazin, creator of the HBO series Chernobyl

About Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own, distinctive non-fiction genre which brings together a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Boys in Zinc (1991), Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and Second-Hand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time'.
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