Voices from Chernobyl

CONTENTS

Translator’s Preface

Historical Note

Prologue: A Solitary Human Voice

PART ONE: THE LAND OF THE DEAD

On Why We Remember

About What Can Be Talked about with the Living and the Dead

About a Whole Life Written down on Doors

By Those Who Returned

About What Radiation Looks Like

About a Song without Words

About a Homeland

About How a Person Is Only Clever and Refined in Evil

Soldiers’ Chorus

PART TWO: THE LAND OF THE LIVING

About Old Prophecies

About a Moonlit Landscape

About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When He Saw Christ Fall

About a Single Bullet

About How We Can’t Live without Chekhov and Tolstoy

About War Movies

A Scream

About a New Nation

About Writing Chernobyl

About Lies and Truths

People’s Chorus

PART THREE: AMAZED BY SADNESS

About What We Didn’t Know: Death Can Be So Beautiful

About the Shovel and the Atom

About Taking Measurements

About How the Frightening Things in Life Happen Quietly and Naturally

About Answers

About Memories

About Loving Physics

About Expensive Salami

About Freedom and the Dream of an Ordinary Death

About the Shadow of Death

About a Damaged Child

About Political Strategy

By a Defender of the Soviet Government

About Instructions

About the Limitless Power One Person Can Have over Another

About Why We Love Chernobyl

Children’s Chorus

A Solitary Human Voice

In Place of an Epilogue