Stalking the Atomic City

September 1, 2022

This book recounts Kamysh's personal connection to and many stays in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where he is a regular. Visits are illegal and possibly very dangerous because of contamination from the nuclear reactor disaster. Most people go because they are curious, although the place has been mostly abandoned since 1986. Tours are attractive to adventurers, scofflaws, and outlaws. People go to loot, party, hideout, examine the remains, and maybe bring back a little souvenir, most of which include toxic radiation readings. The forbidden is attractive, but this is also a place to interact with an environment where humans don't rule. Narrator BJ Harrison does a wonderful job conveying the everyday quality of the author's words in this apocalyptic setting. There is no added drama to the reading because there is no need for it. VERDICT This first translated work from an important Ukrainian voice is an interesting addition to any public library collection.--Christa Van Herreweghe

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 10, 2022
Ukrainian novelist Kamysh makes his English-language debut with this evocative portrait of Chornobyl’s Exclusion Zone, the 1,000-square-mile site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, and the “illegal tourists” who explore it for days and weeks at a time. Mixing travelogue and reportage, Kamysh, whose father helped clear the site of contaminated debris, finds a stark metaphor for post-Soviet depravity in the derelict world he explores. He describes hiking 20 miles through waist-deep snow to climb 500-foot radar antennae; sleeping in an abandoned building near the rotting corpse of a wolf; being ambushed by police; and his “radiation fetishism” for contaminated graphite rods and “still glowing” liquidator’s helmets. He also makes bitter fun of “rich girls” who map “every nook of the terra incognita on Instagram” and foreigners who dress for January snowdrifts “in proper autumn camo with anti-mosquito mesh,” and draws vivid character sketches of squatters and looters such as Kolia America, who races around at night on a scooter looking for scrap metal. Though some of Kamysh’s stylistic mannerisms grate, he captures the zone’s strange mix of beauty and bleakness with precision. It’s a captivating study of “the most exotic place on Earth.” Photos.