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Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl

(Paperback)

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Publishing Details

Full Title:

Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl

Contributors:

By (Author) Markiyan Kamysh
Translated by Hanna Leliv
Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes

ISBN:

9781782278559

Publisher:

Pushkin Press

Imprint:

Pushkin Press

Publication Date:

5th October 2022

UK Publication Date:

7th July 2022

Country:

United Kingdom

Classifications

Readership:

General

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Main Subject:
Dewey:

947.77

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Paperback

Number of Pages:

160

Dimensions:

Width 135mm, Height 216mm

Description

'A voice that must be heard' - Patti Smith

For many, the 1,000-square-mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is a symbol of total disaster: a reminder of the day thousands of lives were shattered, now a toxic no-man's-land. For Markiyan Kamysh, it is a place to relax.

He and dozens like him call themselves 'stalkers': wild adventurers who sneak past border patrols and police to spend days exploring the desolate corners of abandoned villages and settlements. In Stalking the Atomic City, Kamysh, the son of a Chornobyl disaster liquidator, invites us 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 days alone in the rusted ruins, of panicked brushes with police and moments of ecstatic celebration in the wasteland. A breathless account of danger and freedom, Stalking the Atomic City is a captivating insider look at a unique subculture.

'An existential travel guide and an experiment in gonzo psychogeography, it stirs obvious comparisons with Hunter S Thompson... mesmerising' - Telegraph
'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

Reviews

'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

Author Bio

Markiyan Kamysh is a Ukrainian writer who represents the Chornobyl underground in literature. Since 2010, he has illegally explored the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. He is the son of a Chornobyl liquidator, nuclear physicist and design engineer of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kyiv who died in 2003. Stalking the Atomic City, his first book, has been translated into multiple languages and published to great acclaim. He lives in Kyiv, Ukraine. See more photos on his Instagram @markiyankamysh.

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