Voices from Chernobyl. Светлана Алексиевич

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      VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL

      VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL

      SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH

      TRANSLATION AND PREFACE BY KEITH GESSEN

      First published in Russian as Tchernobylskaia Molitva by Editions Ostojie, 1997

      Copyright © 1997 by Svetlana Alexievich

      Translation © 2005 by Keith Gessen

      First edition, 2005

      All rights reserved

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

      ISBN 1-56478-401-0

      Partially funded by grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

      Dalkey Archive Press is a nonprofit organization located at Milner Library

      (Illinois State University) and distributed in the UK by

      Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd. (London).

       www.centerforbookculture.org

      Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in Canada.

      CONTENTS

       Translator’s Preface

       Historical Note

       Prologue: A Solitary Human Voice

       PART ONE: THE LAND OF THE DEAD

       On Why We Remember

       About What Can Be Talked about with the Living and the Dead

       About a Whole Life Written down on Doors

       By Those Who Returned

       About What Radiation Looks Like

       About a Song without Words

       About a Homeland

       About How a Person Is Only Clever and Refined in Evil

       Soldiers’ Chorus

       PART TWO: THE LAND OF THE LIVING

       About Old Prophecies

       About a Moonlit Landscape

       About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When He Saw Christ Fall

       About a Single Bullet

       About How We Can’t Live without Chekhov and Tolstoy

       About War Movies

       A Scream

       About a New Nation

       About Writing Chernobyl

       About Lies and Truths

       People’s Chorus

       PART THREE: AMAZED BY SADNESS

       About What We Didn’t Know: Death Can Be So Beautiful

       About the Shovel and the Atom

       About Taking Measurements

       About How the Frightening Things in Life Happen Quietly and Naturally

       About Answers

       About Memories

       About Loving Physics

       About Expensive Salami

       About Freedom and the Dream of an Ordinary Death

       About the Shadow of Death

       About a Damaged Child

       About Political Strategy

       By a Defender of the Soviet Government

       About Instructions

       About the Limitless Power One Person Can Have over Another

       About Why We Love Chernobyl

       Children’s Chorus

       A Solitary Human Voice

       In Place of an Epilogue

      TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

      On September 11, 2001, after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, emergency triage stations were set up throughout New York City. Doctors and nurses rushed to their hospitals for extra shifts, and many individuals came to donate blood. These were touching acts of generosity and solidarity. The shocking thing about them was that the blood and triage stations turned out to be unnecessary. There were few survivors of the