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

Absolutely fantastic

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

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

One of the most humane and terrifying books I’ve ever read

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

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

This masterly new translation by Anna Gunin and Arch Tait retains the nerve and pulse of the Russian

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

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