A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR
What if Chernobyl was just the beginning?
The acclaimed winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize returns to Chernobyl to tell the gripping story of thirty-five days of war
On 24 February 2022, the first day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armoured vehicles approached the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. It was the most direct way for them to reach the capital - and an extraordinarily reckless plan after the disaster that had taken place there three decades earlier. Russian occupation of the plant had begun. It would last thirty-five days.
Closely reported and narrated from multiple perspectives, this is the story of the Ukrainians who were held hostage and worked...
Serhii Plokhy is the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Pushkin House Book Prize, and the New York Times bestseller The Gates of Europe. His many acclaimed books, including The Russo-Ukrainian War, Nuclear Folly and Atoms and Ashes, have been translated into over a dozen languages. He is Professor of History at Harvard University where he also serves as Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
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