Chernobyl prayer : a chronicle of the future / Svetlana Alexievich ; translated by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1.Land of the Dead -- Monologue on why people remember -- Monologue on how we can talk with both the living and the dead -- Monologue on a whole life written on a door -- Monologue of a village on how they call the souls from heaven to weep and eat with them -- Monologue on how happy a chicken would be to find a worm. And what is bubbling in the pot is also not forever -- Monologue on a song without words -- Three monologues on ancient fear, and on why one man stayed silent while the women spoke -- Monologue on how man is crafty only in evil, but simple and open in his words of love -- The Soldiers' Choir -- 2.The Crown of Creation -- Monologue on the old prophecies -- Monologue on a moonscape -- Monologue of a witness who had toothache when he saw Christ fall and cry out -- Three monologues on the `walking ashes' and the `talking dust' -- Monologue on how we can't live without Tolstoy and Chekhov --Contents note continued: Monologue on what St Francis preached to the birds -- Monologue without a title: a scream -- Monologue in two voices: male and female -- Monologue on how some completely unknown thing can worm its way into you -- Monologue on Cartesian philosophy and on eating a radioactive sandwich with someone so as not to be ashamed -- Monologue on our having long ago come down from the trees but not yet having come up with a way of making them grow into wheels -- Monologue by a capped well -- Monologue about longing for a role and a narrative -- The Folk Choir -- 3.Admiring Disaster -- Monologue on something we did not know: death can look so pretty -- Monologue on how easy it is to return to dust -- Monologue on the symbols and secrets of a great country -- Monologue on the fact that terrible things in life happen unspectacularly and naturally -- Monologue on the observation that a Russian always wants to believe in something --Contents note continued: Monologue about how defenceless a small life is in a time of greatness -- Monologue on physics, with which we were all once in love -- Monologue on something more remote than Kolyma, Auschwitz and the Holocaust -- Monologue on freedom and the wish to die an ordinary death -- Monologue on a freak who is going to be loved anyway -- Monologue on the need to add something to everyday life in order to understand it -- Monologue on a mute soldier -- Monologue on the eternal, accursed questions: `What is to be done?' and `Who is to blame?' -- Monologue of a defender of Soviet power -- Monologue on how two angels took little Olenka -- Monologue on the unaccountable power of one person over another -- Monologue on sacrificial victims and priests -- The Children's Choir.

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

A chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you to forget.