'Melanie Arndt places children at the centre of the Chernobyl catastrophe to reveal the ways Soviets built a civil society and faced the Anthropocene head-on. Brilliant research, a stunning work.' Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future 'Hundreds of thousands of children suffered from the Chernobyl disaster, even after evacuation, in irradiated landscapes, as their state failed them. Melanie Arndt gives voice to these forgotten Chernobyl children, the most vulnerable members of society, and to transnational charities that struggled to help them after the collapse of the USSR.' Paul Josephson, author of Hero Projects 'In a nuanced study rife with paradox, Melanie Arndt shows how the explosion of Chernobyl's unit number 4 on 26 April 1986 shuttered cities, shattered lives, and accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. But at the same time, it kicked off an unprecedented transnational medical response, nowhere more poignant than in the story of the Chernobyl children, young people who emerged from under the radioactive cloud to become the focus of international aid and recuperation efforts, and who grew up grateful for and often transformed by the experience of travel in foreign lands, all while refusing the victimhood so often thrust upon them. The catastrophe of Chernobyl transcends generations; in this transcendent history of this 'long disaster' we not only begin to grasp not only its dark complexity and dreadful meaning but, astonishingly, glimmers of hope.' Louis S. Warren, author of God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America
