title: Modern Classics: Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future
author:  Svetlana Alexievich 
description: Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own, distinctive non-fiction genre which brings together a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Boys in Zinc (1991), Chernobyl Prayer (1997) and Second-Hand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time'.
zlib_text: VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL
  
  
  SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH
  
  
  TRANSLATION AND PREFACE BY KEITH GESSEN
  
  
  ![image](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  First published in Russian as _Tchernobylskaia Molitva_ by Editions Ostojie,
  1997
  
  
  Copyright © 1997 by Svetlana Alexievich
  
  
  Translation © 2005 by Keith Gessen
  
  
  First edition, 2005
  
  
  All rights reserved
  
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
  
  
  ISBN 1-56478-401-0
  
  
  Partially funded by grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment
  for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.jpeg)
  
  
  Dalkey Archive Press is a nonprofit organization located at Milner Library  
  (Illinois State University) and distributed in the UK by  
  Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd. (London).
  
  
  [www.centerforbookculture.org](http://www.centerforbookculture.org)
  
  
  Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in Canada.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CONTENTS
  
  
  [_Translator’s Pr