I just finished Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich and I don’t know what I expected but I didn’t expect their ghosts to speak to me.

I expected it to be stories from the citizens that were evacuated from Chernobyl but this is done like slave narratives. It's their own words. Heartbreaking, traumatizing, terrifying and honestly naive. They all are so blatant that they were simple people that didn't understand, didn't know the dangers. The stories made me gasp out loud and tear up. If you are an animal lover stories about how liquidators, that's what the soldiers who were sent to Chernobyl were called, had to dispose of them will make you cry. But the animals; cats and dogs and livestock were suffering so much.

If anyone else has read this I'd be interested in their thoughts. I've read lots of technical books about Chernobyl that give background of nuclear power around the world and especially the disasters Russia experienced before Chernobyl and was familiar with the basic stories because of those books. But reading this side of it, especially the wives of the firefighters absolutely broke me.