Voices from Chernobyl and the Jalaur River Dam Project
Belarussian journalist and writer Svetlana Alexievich's body of work consists of nonfiction but she specifically got this year's Nobel Prize for her book, Voices from Chernobyl. Originally written in Russian which follows her country's oral tradition, the book gave voices to the victims of the largest technical disaster of the twentieth century. I was able to read a short but already riveting portion of the book in Paris Review, and I quote here the portion which I believe can represent the pain of 2.1 million people: I was twenty-three. Two months later I went back to Moscow. From the train station straight to the cemetery. To him! And at the cemetery I started going into labor. Just as I started talking to him—they called the ambulance. It was two weeks before I was due. They showed her to me—a girl. “Natashenka,” I called out. “Your father named you Natashenka.” She looked healthy. Arms, legs. But she had cirrhosis of the liver. Her liver had twenty-eight ...