Dalkey Archive Book Finalist for Prestigious Award

On January 14 in New York, Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich was announced as one of five finalists for what many in the book world consider the most prestigious annual prize: the National Book Critics Circle Award, which is given by a 700-member book-reviewer organization representing all review media in the United States.

Despite suppression in the former Soviet Union and denials by both the media and foreign governments, including the United States, the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 was a grave catastrophe, one of the twentieth century’s worst man-made disasters.

..Alexievich spent three years carefully recording the stories from those who were at the site the day of the meltdown and those who were sent in to try to clean up the site and seal the reactor, many of whom were told that there were no health risks and who were frequently bribed with the promise of a car for their efforts. Under pressure from Soviet authorities, Alexievich had to emigrate from the Soviet Union or face the consequences for reporting on the countless numbers of who died both before and long after what the state-run Soviet media called “an incident.”

Center for Book Culture