ection>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).
Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in Canada.
CONTENTS
Prologue: A Solitary Human Voice
PART ONE: THE LAND OF THE DEAD
About What Can Be Talked about with the Living and the Dead
About a Whole Life Written down on Doors
About What Radiation Looks Like
About How a Person Is Only Clever and Refined in Evil
PART TWO: THE LAND OF THE LIVING
About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When He Saw Christ Fall
About How We Can’t Live without Chekhov and Tolstoy
About What We Didn’t Know: Death Can Be So Beautiful
About How the Frightening Things in Life Happen Quietly and Naturally
About Freedom and the Dream of an Ordinary Death
By a Defender of the Soviet Government
