Reilly Costigan-Humes
autor
Stalking the Atomic City
A voice that must be heard - Patti Smith
An exhilarating, immersive journey into the Exclusion Zone of Chornobyl with the disaffected adventurers who illegally stalk its ruins
Amidst the toxic desolation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, a subculture has sprung up. They call themselves ‘stalkers’: wild adventurers who sneak past border controls to get lost in this apocalyptic environment of dense swampland and rusted ruins. Markiyan Kamysh is one, and here he takes us on a hallucinatory journey into an alien world.
With reckless energy, Kamysh tells of escapes from the police, hedonistic nights in bombed-out buildings and the spectral beauty that got him hooked on returning to the Zone. Brash, immersive and ecstatic, this is a singular document of a dystopian reality.
The Orphanage
A devastating story of the struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine
Chosen as one of "Six Books to Read for Context on Ukraine" by the New York Times
Selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the "20 Best Books of 2021"
"Powerful . . . For those who want a glimpse of what life will be like in Ukraine for years to come, The Orphanage offers a frightening glimpse."-Bill Marx, Arts Fuse
If every war needs its master chronicler, Ukraine has Serhiy Zhadan, one of Europe's most promising novelists. Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher, sets out for the orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives, now in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home.
Written with a raw intensity, this is a deeply personal account of violence that will be remembered as the definitive novel of the war in Ukraine.
