ISBN: 9780241270530    Publisher: Penguin Classics (21 April 2016) Year of publishing: 2016     Format:  NA No of Pages: 304        Language: English

The startling history of the Chernobyl disaster by Svetlana Alexievich the winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2015 - A new translation by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait based on the revised text - On 26 April 1986 at 1.23am 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.
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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 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) 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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