Midnight in Chernobyl Author: [UK] Adam Higginbotham Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

【Editor's recommendation】

★Nearly 30,000 people on the famous reading website Goodreads gave it a high score of 4.38, praising "Midnight in Chernobyl as one of the best non-fiction books you can read."

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★ Pulitzer Prize winner, author of "Gulag: A History" Anne Applebaum and other top European and American writers and scholars highly recommend it;

Craig Mazin, creator of the famous HBO drama "Chernobyl": I feel very sorry that I didn't read the book before filming.

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This vivid account of history's worst disaster also allows us to see the puzzling real-life events that unfolded every day in the final years of the Soviet Union.

—Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer Prize winner)

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This book is a valuable contribution to history and an excellently told story of a world-renowned event like Chernobyl.

—— Shahili Puluoji

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★Chernobyl, the eternal nightmare in the history of human civilization: more than a decade of in-depth investigation by authoritative journalists, hundreds of hours of interview recordings, and a large number of archives, letters, and memoirs exposed for the first time, presenting a panoramic view of the entire process of this devastating nuclear disaster of our time:

The author, Adam Higginbotham, is a senior reporter for The New Yorker, and his ability to control stories and dig out and use materials is first-class. The whole book is carefully annotated, with more than 100 pages of notes alone. The solid and rigorous materials used are comparable to academic works, and the readability is comparable to a thriller novel.

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★ Capturing science and humanity in a story of hubris and doomed failure; there are no unsung heroes here, and everyone has a face:

The book contains a large number of character portraits, which are stories obtained by the author after spending more than ten years interviewing people who experienced the disaster. These people have long been forgotten by their countries and compatriots, including various senior officials of the Soviet Union, "whistleblowers", rescue heroes, medical personnel, accident cleaners, and people who later stood on the bench.

The author focuses on the people involved and how they make difficult decisions in the face of sudden disasters. It represents a cross-section of Soviet society and exposes the cowardice and bravery of individual human beings. What is ultimately obtained is a story that is more complex, more humane, and more terrifying than the Soviet legend.

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★More distressing than any horror movie, more thrilling than any thriller novel;

Despite providing a massive amount of information, this book is not daunting. The author has a broad vision, ingenious ideas, and precise grasp of details, which makes every step of the story full of tension. The narrative style, like a thriller, makes the book extremely readable.

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★Won the annual lists of many first-line media in Europe and the United States: Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of the Year, New York Times and Time Magazine Book of the Year, and Andrew Carnegie Medal in 2020;

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【Content Introduction】

Adam Higginbotham's definitive account of the Chernobyl disaster is a years-long study that reveals how political propaganda, secrecy, and rumour-mongering helped to conceal the truth about one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters.

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In the early morning of April 26, 1986, the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant exploded, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in history. In the three decades since then, Chernobyl has gradually become an indelible nightmare for the entire world: the lingering threat of radiation poisoning, the huge risk of a dangerous technology running out of control, the fragility of the ecosystem, and the damage caused to its citizens and the world. However, the truth of the accident has been covered up from the beginning, and there have been many different opinions for a long time.

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Relying on hundreds of hours of interviews over more than a decade, supplemented by letters, unpublished memoirs, and recently declassified archival documents, Adam Higginbotham has turned what those who experienced the disaster witnessed into an objective, calm, and thought-provoking account. The result is a thrilling nonfiction masterpiece, a story more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet legend.

About the Author · · · · · ·