- Published: 28 January 2021
- ISBN: 9780241481837
- Imprint: Penguin Audio
- Format: Audio Download
- RRP: $26.99
Chernobyl Prayer
Voices from Chernobyl
- Published: 28 January 2021
- ISBN: 9780241481837
- Imprint: Penguin Audio
- Format: Audio Download
- RRP: $26.99
A collage of oral testimony that turns into the psychobiography of a nation not shown on any map... The book leaves radiation burns on the brain
Julian Barnes, Guardian
A beautifully written book, it's been years since I had to look away from a page because it was just too heart-breaking to go on. Give me beautiful prose and I'll follow you anywhere
Arundhati Roy, Elle
A searing mix of eloquence and wordlessness... From her interviewees' monologues she creates history that the reader, at whatever distance from the events, can actually touch
Julian Evans, Daily Telegraph
One of the most humane and terrifying books I've ever read
Helen Simpson, Observer
Alexievich's documentary approach makes the experiences vivid, sometimes almost unbearably so - but it's a remarkably democratic way of constructing a book... When you consider the extent to which she has been traversing the irradiated landscape, you realise she has put herself on the line in a way very few authors ever do
Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
A moving piece of polyphony, skilfully assembled from what must have been a huge mass of material... We are living in Alexievich's 'age of disasters'. This haunting book offers us at least some ways of thinking about that predicament
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman
Alexievich assembles the previously silenced or unsung heroes into a chorus that has the power to move, stun and inspire awe. The result is a remarkable oral history, an essential read
Malcolm Forbes, Herald Scotland
Not merely a work of documentation but of excavation, of revealed meaning. It is hard to imagine how anyone in the West will read these cantos of loss and not feel a sense of communion, of a shared humanity
Andrew Meier, The Nation
Alexievich serves no ideology, only an ideal: to listen closely enough to the ordinary voices of her time to orchestrate them into extraordinary books
Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker
[Alexievich] has become one of my heroes
Atul Gawande
Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Svetlana Alexievich is a brilliant choice that recalibrates the status of "non-fiction" in the literary canon
Arifa Akbar, Independent
Through her books and her life itself, Alexievich has gained probably the world's deepest, most eloquent understanding of the post-Soviet condition
Masha Gessen, New Yorker
Alexievich retreats into the wings to let her subjects speak. But this is the art that conceals art. Her editor's flair for selection, contrast and emphasis, her almost cinematic touch with cuts, pans and close-ups, make her a documentary virtuoso
Boyd Tonkin, Spectator
Her interviews go on for hours. She goes back for more. She transcribes. She discards three-quarters of her material. She polishes. She takes pains to convey the cadence of a person's words. It shows. The distilled work goes deep into the subject. She is after the ephemeral; the emotion behind written history; the "history of the soul." Here, she believes, is where the truth lies
Vanora Bennett, Prospect
This masterly new translation by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait retains the nerve and pulse of the Russian, conveying the angst and confusion of the narrators
Serguei Alex. Oushakine, Times Literary Supplement
Absolutely fantastic
Karl Ove Knausgaard
The last book that made me cry... incredible
Joe Dunthorne, Guardian
This masterly new translation by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait retains the nerve and pulse of the Russian
TLS