Svetlana Alexievich  <<

The Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future (Voices From Chernobyl) 

Published by

Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany

Vremya, Russia

Saeib Books, South Korea

Lattés, France

Citic, China

Penguin Random House, UK

Czarne, Poland

Penguin Random House, Spain

Ersatz, Sweden

Iwanami Shoten, Japan

Solum Forlag, Norway

20|20 Editora, Portugal

Owl Publishing House, Taiwan

Edizioni e/o, Italia

Artanuji Publishers, Georgia

Edicije Bozicevic, Croatia

Tammi Publishers, Finland

Europa Publishers, Hungary

Alma littera, Lithuania

Megha Books, India (Malayalam)

Ethir Veliyedu, India (Tamil)

Folio, Ukraine

Region Projekt, Slovakia

Rayo Verde Editorial, Spain (Catalan)

Fan Noli, Albania

Companhia das Letras, Brazil

Lindhardt og Ringhof, Denmark

De Bezige Bij, The Netherlands

Buzuku, Kosovo

Epsilon Yayincilik Ltd., Turkey

Patakis Publishers, Greece

Khuc Thi Hoa Phuong, Vietnam

Pistorius & Olsanska, Czech Republic

Olebella Publishers, India (Kannada)

Kostova Antolog, North Macedonia

Bolor Sudar, Mongolia

Dalkey Archive Press (paperback edition: Picador), USA

Paradox, Bulgaria

Vinnochokh Publications, Bangladesh

Madhushree Publication, India (Marathi)

Grup Media Litera, Romania

Angústúra, Iceland

Koolehposhti, Iran

Sprotin, Faroe Islands

Hakibbutz Hameuchad – Sifriat Poalim, Israel

The HBO TV series "Chernobyl" is based among others on some stories from "The Chernobyl Prayer".

The film adaptation "Voices from Chernobyl" ("La supplication"), 2015, by Pol Cruchten has been honoured as "Best Documentary" at the Minneapolis St. Paul Film Festival and has been awarded the "Grand Prix" at the Festival International du Film d'Environnement, Paris, and the Grand Prize "Cora Coralina" at the 18th International Environmental Film and Video Festival (FICA) in Brazil.

The solos and chorus sung by those directly affected by Chernobyl give a chilling immediacy to the full scope of the Chernobyl disaster. There is the voice of the fire fighter’s wife who was kept from going to her husband because he was a dangerous “radioactive” object. There is the uncomprehending voice of an old woman farmer unable to see why she has to leave her village: “Why go away? It’s good to be here. Everything grows, everything flourishes.” There is a chorus of voices representing the “clean-up crew” soldiers for whom it has taken years to understand why girls do not want to make love to them. The beginning and the end of the book are each marked by the monologue of a “lonely human voice.” They are the voices of two women, who tended their husbands to the very end of a gruesome death from radiation sickness, watching their bodies literally falling apart. Alexievich emphasizes—and rightly so—that this is not a book about Chernobyl, but about the after effects of Chernobyl, about people living in a new reality that already exists, but which has not yet been comprehended. Those who experienced Chernobyl are the survivors of an atomic World War III. In this hostile world, “everything seems to be entirely normal, evil hides behind a new mask, one cannot see it, hear it, touch it, or smell it. Anything can kill you – water, the soil, an apple, rain. Our dictionary is out of date. There are as yet no words, no feelings to describe it.”