I saw Midnight in Chernobyl at a bookstore over the weekend and it looked interesting (esp. since I’ve been rewatching Chernobyl on HBO — even better than I remember). Has anyone read this? Is it good?
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. ❤️
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Comments 11
thread
latest
popular
it's great and even more terrifying than the miniseries. the miniseries did a very good job adhering to the book, but you read the book and wonder- how did they get all of this detail??
I didn't watch the series, but highly recommend the book, an absolute standout!
I listened to it last year and found it very compelling and well written.
I watched the first 15 minutes of the miniseries and decided that there was no way it was going to be as good as the book.
I read it while I had very young kids and found it difficult to put down for much-needed sleep.
I think the miniseries relied on Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl (also called Chernobyl Prayer in English), whose novelistic renderings of oral histories from local residents inspired many of the subplots in the show (and contributed to her 2015 Nobel win for lit). Kate Brown's Manual for Survival: a Chernobyl Guide to the Future also matters here. I haven't read the Higginbotham book—gotta do!
Haven't read Midnight yet, but I agree the Chernobyl mini series is *so good*.
I have read "Producing Power" by Sonja Schmid. The drama isn't as urgent as a story of the Unit 4 explosion, but it's a really really good history of the forces which guided the Soviet nuclear power program to rapidly expand (and ignore problems with) the RBMK design: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/656885/producing-power-by-sonja-d-schmid/9780262538800
In the excellent companion podcast for the show, Craig Mazin mentions Voices from Chernobyl a couple of times. I checked it out once and can recommend it, too. The first-person accounts are chilling.
HUGE thank you to the folks in this thread who recommended the "Midnight in Chernobyl" book. I hadn't watched the miniseries yet, and was able to grab this at my local library. It's absolutely fantastic, I'm learning so much, though it's making it hard for me to sleep at night!
"Midnight at Chernobyl" is fantastic, a really stellar companion to "Chernobyl". I listened to the podcast that HBO produced alongside the tv show, and the showrunner mentioned at one point that he read the book after production (or maybe towards the end thereof), and wished that it had been published early enough to be useful for the show because it really is great.
I also recommend Higginbotham's new book about the Challenger disaster that was published earlier this year.
Oooh Challenger?! I'm in! Thanks for the pointer.
Hello! In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!
In order to comment or fave, you need to be a current kottke.org member. Check out your options for renewal.
This is the name that'll be displayed next to comments you make on kottke.org; your email will not be displayed publicly. I'd encourage you to use your real name (or at least your first name and last initial) but you can also pick something that you go by when you participate in communities online. Choose something durable and reasonably unique (not "Me" or "anon"). Please don't change this often. No impersonation.
Note: I'm letting folks change their display names because the membership service that kottke.org uses collects full names and I thought some people might not want their names displayed publicly here. If it gets abused, I might disable this feature.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.
Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.
Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!