Chernobyl, My Love

USSR, 1987. The life and career of twenty-two-year-old capital journalist Nadezhda Petrenko would have been quite successful if she had not met Lyubov — a forty-year-old engineer-physicist, married and “morally unstable.” Vladimir went to Chernobyl to mitigate the consequences of the disaster, and Nadya decided to follow him — despite losing everything: her job, family, friends… Was it true love or the biggest mistake of her life?

In this autobiographical novel-memoir, two plots intertwine closely — the chronicle of a passionate love and the story of a technological disaster. But the main focus in the Zone is on the people — those who lived and worked in extreme situations. A vivid and deeply personal account by Nadezhda Petrenko, based on her diary entries and journalistic notes, is filled with many details and everyday aspects of that challenging time.