What do you think?
Rate this book
A Day in Chernobyl: Walking Through the Post-Apocalypse
A Day in Chernobyl is a wry, intelligent, deeply personal account of one day in the Zone, written before the Russian invasion of 2022 closed it forever. It is a record of a place that no longer exists in this form, and a meditation on history, ecology, and what we leave behind.
Bulgarian writer Izabela Shopova travels into the Zone with two Ukrainian guides and a small group of Australian friends. What she finds is not the radioactive wasteland she expected but something more a green, blooming, birdsong-loud place where the dark past sits beneath the moss, waiting, lurking.
Shopova was fifteen when the reactor exploded in 1986. She marched in the May Day parade under the radioactive rain. She remembers the songs, the textbooks, the lies. Walking through Pripyat and Kopachi, she is not a tourist - she is a witness returning.In May 2018. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is still open to tourists. Acacia blossom drifts through abandoned playgrounds. Deer browse where children once played. The only sound near Reactor 4 is the click of Geiger counters. And the birds' tweetiing.
Bulgarian writer Izabela Shopova travels into the Zone with two Ukrainian guides and a small group of Australian friends. What she finds is not the radioactive wasteland she expected but something more a green, blooming, birdsong-loud place where the dark past sits beneath the moss, waiting, lurking.
Shopova was fifteen when the reactor exploded in 1986. She marched in the May Day parade under the radioactive rain. She remembers the songs, the textbooks, the lies. Walking through Pripyat and Kopachi, she is not a tourist - she is a witness returning.In May 2018. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is still open to tourists. Acacia blossom drifts through abandoned playgrounds. Deer browse where children once played. The only sound near Reactor 4 is the click of Geiger counters. And the birds' tweetiing.
41 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 16, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 25, 2026
interesting
I’ve been interested in the Chernobyl disaster for as long as I can remember. How could something like that happen? How can it still have existing issues even now, 40 years later. Why did anyone think using nuclear power was a good or safe idea?! This book shares inside the aftermath of the nuclear disaster with information on radiation and how the effects are long term. I found it very interesting that the other nuclear reactors continued to run just 6 months after the disaster! This was a short read but it was still fascinating to me and I learned some new and interesting information.
I’ve been interested in the Chernobyl disaster for as long as I can remember. How could something like that happen? How can it still have existing issues even now, 40 years later. Why did anyone think using nuclear power was a good or safe idea?! This book shares inside the aftermath of the nuclear disaster with information on radiation and how the effects are long term. I found it very interesting that the other nuclear reactors continued to run just 6 months after the disaster! This was a short read but it was still fascinating to me and I learned some new and interesting information.
Displaying 1 of 1 review