Summary of Chernobyl

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe is a book by Svetlana Alexievich, a Nobel Prize–winning journalist. The book recounts the story of the Chernobyl disaster—the nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April 1986—as told by witnesses and survivors.The book is based on hundreds of interviews conducted by Alexievich with both the Soviet citizens who endured the tragedy and the people who were in charge of the rescue effort. In it, she chronicles the ways in which the disaster affected the lives of the people in the area and its impact on the Soviet Union. At the same time, the book serves as a documentary on the Soviet government's poor response to the incident, and the broader political and environmental issues raised by the disaster.