Reviews

• women and children first

  まさに"women and children first"の実践と言える文を読み泣きました。 "Get out of here! Go! You have our child." But how can I leave him? He's telling me: "Go! Leave! Save the baby." あってはならない事態に直面した時には、優先順位が生死を分かちます。そんな時に生き残るべきは女（おんな）子どもで、死んでも守らなければならないと分かっていてもなかなか実践できるものではないでしょう。 そんな話しも載っています。

• Un libro doloroso, que remueve, pero necesario (Hurful, moving, necessary)

  A book to be read calmly, without hurries. Some things exceed mere data or facts, it is necessary to listen to real people who lived through them, and this is what the author provides us with in this book. I really appreciate having read it.

• Now I know

  I am a big fan of Svetlana and this book just made me realize one more time how important it is to learn from our history. All the pain, all the lies and all the love described so intimate in this book. I highly recommend it to everyone!

• Harrowing & Unique Account of Chernobyl

  I'll readily admit that I was not familiar with Svetlana Alexievich until she was named the 2015 Nobel Prize recipient for Literature. After reading about her, I was intrigued by her approach of extensively interviewing people and using their verbatims to create a coherent account about a specific subject. I had yet to read something of any length that employed such an approach and was eager to see how effective and engaging this method of storytelling could be. I was 16 at the time of Chernobyl and remember it as one of those defining Cold War moments of my youth like the 1980 US-USSR hockey game, the downing of KAL 007 or Reagan's speech at the Berlin Wall. As with many in the West, my perspective was garnered from how it was covered in the West, much of the information at the time limited given how carefully choreographed information from the USSR was and limited Western access to people closest to the disaster. A few years ago, I revisited the topic by reading a kindle single "The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident" put out by the NYT which contained all of its main coverage of the accident. The opportunity to "witness" the disaster from the inside, no less through Alexievich's unique approach, was enough to make me pick up this book. Reading "Voices of Chernobyl" is an eerie and unnerving experience. The magnitude of the Chernobyl accident is almost unfathomable and reading first person accounts about the untold physical, emotional and psychological damage is quite harrowing. Of course, the accounts of the physical suffering are almost too shocking to digest and will leave anyone's stomach turning. However, it is the massive state apparatus that covered up the real danger and sacrificed tens of thousands of its own people to the unspeakable levels of radioactive emissions, told through disillusioned, angry, devastated individuals that makes for a remarkable read. "Voices of Chernobyl" works so well because of the Alexievich's deep research and brilliant ability to piece together the right first person accounts in such a compelling narrative. I became convinced by the time I finished this book that the raw and unique emotional power "Voices of Chernobyl" could not have been achieved through a more traditional journalist account.

• Very good book

  My daughter asked for this book as it’s a very famous book and everyone who is interested in history should read this.

• Ottima lettura per approfondire il tema

  Lettura scorrevole con tante testimonianze ed interviste di chi ha subito l'evento e le conseguenze a posteriori. Lo consiglio soprattutto a chi é appassionato sull'argomento per approfondire diversi aspetti che normalmente non vengono trattati nei libri di storia.

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