Voices from Chernobyl
Wednesday, 1 November 2006 @ 21:48
Chronicle of the Future
by Svetlana Alexievich (1997)
( New version from the Dalkey Archive Press available )
“This is not a book about Chernobyl, but about the world of Chernobyl,” so Alexievich wrote, and indeed, instead of writing about what happened, she compiled a wide range of oral, first-hand testimony, accounts, sometimes occasional rant and condemnations from broad range of people involved and/or affected by Chernobyl. Plenty of tongue-in-cheek resignations in the face of something big and unknown gone wrong. Alexievich is mostly invisible—she allows everyone to speak for themselves—although a certain amount of editing has definitely been done. Alexievich realises that “suffering is our refuge”, that, as one of her interviewee said, people who haven’t suffered hungered for stories about suffering— “cheap philosophy”.
