Svetlana Alexievich

“The power comes from the stories themselves, the people she found and talked to. Some are in the Caucasus and different parts of the country, people trapped in different Republics, who then face terrible discrimination and have undergone horrible experiences. There are others who, at the time property rights were being established, had their houses or apartments stolen from them by mafia groups. In some ways, this book is backward looking because it’s reminding people how fast Russia has changed and how many people that change has left behind. It’s about how dark the lives are of some of those people, who were brought up in a completely different environment. The book doesn’t have a traditional narrative structure. It’s not one you read in a straightforward way. It’s one you dip into, or pick up and become absorbed by for an hour or so and then step away from. But as a piece of reportage, it’s an extraordinary achievement.” Read more...

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Stephanie Flanders, Economist

“Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist, and oral historian. In 2015, she became the first journalist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The wider literary aim of all her books is to capture the lost cultures of Soviet and post-Soviet communities…The Chernobyl disaster had a devastating impact on the community that was there in terms of all the lives lost and the environment becoming toxic—and with that a whole way of life, a whole cultural memory and way of being in the world. ..Alexievich writes about this book as being a missing history.” Read more...

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Mahlet Zimeta, Philosopher