Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl Book Gets Manga Adaptation

Voices from Chernobyl, a book by Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, is getting a manga adaptation with art by Yuta Kumagai. The manga, published as Chernobyl no Inori, will be serialized in Hakusensha’s seinen manga magazine Young Animal. You can check out the first volume cover below:

Voices from Chernobyl was first published by Alexievich in Russian as Chernobylskaya molitva (Chernobyl Prayer) in 1997 by publisher Ostozhʹe. The book was also published under the title Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future in the United Kingdom. Barnes & Nobles provides a listing for the book, describing the plot as:

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown—from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster—and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty.

At the time of the Chernobyl incident, Alexievich was based in Minsk, the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Belarus). For 10 years, she has interviewed more than 500 eyewitnesses, including firefighters, liquidators (members of the cleanup team), politicians, physicians, physicists, and ordinary citizens.

Aside from Voices from Chernobyl, her other works include Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, and Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II. She was also the first journalist to become the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015.

The book was then adapted into a documentary film in 2016, directed by Luxembourgish film director Pol Cruchten. Her work was also used as the basis for the backstories in the 2019 historical miniseries Chernobyl, which was produced by HBO.

Source: Young Animal
© Hakusensha, Svetlana Alexievich, Yuuta Kumagai

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