Stalking the Atomic City
Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl
Markiyan Kamysh author Reilly Costigan-Humes translator Hanna Leliv translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:7th Jul '22
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The 1,000-square-mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is, for many, a symbol of total disaster: a reminder of shattered ideals and lost lives, now a toxic, dangerous no-man's-land. For Markiyan Kamysh, it became a site of pilgrimage. He and dozens like him call themselves 'stalkers': wild adventurers who sneak past border patrols to spend days getting lost in this apocalyptic environment of dense swampland and desolate villages. Kamysh, the son of a Chornobyl disaster liquidator, takes us with him into this alien world. In electric prose that captures the spectral beauty of the Zone and the reckless spirit of the stalkers, Kamysh tells of hallucinatory journeys alone amid the rusted ruins, of frantic brushes with police and moments of ecstatic oblivion in the wasteland. Written with gonzo energy and brash lyricism, Stalking the Atomic City is a vital, singular document of this dystopian reality.
'It won me over in convincing style with its passion and purpose... nihilism of the most seductive, invigorating sort' - Sunday Times
'An existential travel guide and an experiment in gonzo psychogeography, it stirs obvious comparisons with Hunter S Thompson... mesmerising' - Telegraph
'Not since Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano have I been so enthralled by such a poetic rush to madness. But that was fiction: Markiyan Kamysh's epic immersion in this dread symbol of humanity's self-inflicted undoing is shockingly real, recounted in a stunning, original voice as lyrical as it is unnerving' - Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us
'Stark, surreal... A visceral, graphic report from dystopia' - Kirkus Reviews
'Remarkable' - Guardian
'Blunt, bare, ecstatic... [Stalking the Atomic City] has a rare quality of revelation about it and hums with a kind of exhaustedly beautiful intensity.' - Quietus
'Grimly fascinating insights... a memorable read' - Independent
'An extraordinary window on Chernobyl' - New Scientist
ISBN: 9781782278559
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
160 pages