From Publishers Weekly

A chorus of fatalism, stoic bravery and black, black humor is sounded in this haunting oral history of the 1986 nuclear reactor catastrophe in what is now northeastern Ukraine. Russian journalist Alexievich records a wide array of voices: a woman who clings to her irradiated, dying husband though nurses warn her "that's not a person anymore, that's a nuclear reactor"; a hunter dispatched to evacuated villages to exterminate the household pets; soldiers sent in to clean up the mess, bitter at the callous, incompetent Soviet authorities who "flung us there, like sand on the reactor," but accepting their lot as a test of manhood; an idealistic nuclear engineer whose faith in communism is shattered. And there are the local peasants who take this latest in a long line of disasters in stride, filtering back to their homes to harvest their contaminated potatoes, shrugging that if they survived the Germans, they'll survive radiation. Alexievich shapes these testimonies into novelistic "monologues" that convey a vivid portrait of late-Communist malaise, in which bullying party bosses, paranoid propaganda and chaotic mobilizations are resisted with bleak sarcasm ("It wasn't milk, it was a radioactive byproduct"), mournful philosophizing ("[t]he mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse") and lots of vodka. The result is an indelible X-ray of the Russian soul.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There's nowhere to hide." On April 26, 1986, the people of Belarus lost everything when a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded. Many people died outright, and many were evacuated, forced to leave behind everything from pets to family photographs. Millions of acres remain contaminated, and thousands of people continue to be afflicted with diseases caused by radiation as 20 tons of nuclear fuel sit in a reactor shielded by a leaking sarcophagus known as the Cover. For three years, journalist Alexievich spoke with scores of survivors--the widow of a first responder, an on-the-scene cameraman, teachers, doctors, farmers, Party bureaucrats, a historian, scientists, evacuees, resettlers, grandmothers, mothers--and she now presents their shocking accounts of life in a poisoned world. And what quintessentially human stories these are, as each distinct voice expresses anger, fear, ignorance, stoicism, valor, compassion, and love. Alexievich put her own health at risk to gather these invaluable frontline testimonies, which she has transmuted into a haunting and essential work of literature that one can only hope documents a never-to-be-repeated catastrophe. Donna Seaman

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

斯韋特蘭娜·亞曆山德羅夫娜·阿列剋謝耶維奇 Svetlana Alexandravna Alexievich

白俄羅斯作傢，1948年生於烏剋蘭，畢業於明斯剋大學新聞學係。她用與當事人訪談的方式寫作紀實文學，記錄瞭二次世界大戰、阿富汗戰爭、蘇聯解體、切爾諾貝利事故等人類曆史上重大的事件。

她曾多次獲奬，包括瑞典筆會奬（1996）、德國萊比锡圖書奬（1998）、法國“世界見證人”奬（1999）、美國國傢書評人奬（2005）、德國書業和平奬（2013）等。因為獨立報導和批判風格，她的獨立新聞活動曾受到政府限製，代錶作《鋅皮娃娃兵》曾被列為禁書。1992年，她在政治法庭接受審判，後因國際人權觀察組織的抗議而中止。她還曾被指控為中情局工作，電話遭到竊聽，不能公開露麵。2000年，她受到國際避難城市聯盟的協助遷居巴黎，2011年迴明斯剋居住。

2013年，她獲得諾貝爾文學奬提名，入圍最終決選名單。目前她的作品已在19國齣版，並創作有21部記錄片腳本和3部戲劇（曾在法國、德國、保加利亞演齣）。