From Chernobyl with Love
Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Potomac Books Inc
Published:1st Nov '19
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The late 1990s and early aughts were a time of hope—for democracy and free press. The Soviet Union had failed, leaving behind a number of independent countries where the Scorpions’ 1990 pop ballad “Wind of Change” became a rallying cry. Communist propaganda was being replaced by Western ideals of freedom of speech, or so it was hoped. Two decades later the wind of change is blowing the other way. The Russians are proving their expertise in propaganda in far-off lands, including the United States. Russians are masters of “fake news.” Katya Cengel witnessed its production in the former Soviet Union long before it became a catch phrase. With distrust between Russia and the United States at an all-time high, it is hard to imagine an era when young Westerners flocked eastward. Yet that is what happened. Less than two decades ago, writers and adventure seekers sought out countries once controlled by Russia. Prague was the Paris of their generation. Despite the region’s appeal, neither Kyiv nor Riga was the place you would expect to find a twenty-two-year-old California woman just out of college. Kyiv was too close to Moscow. Riga was too small to matter—and too cold. Cengel ended up living in both. She took a job at the Baltic Times in Riga just seven years after Latvia regained its independence. The idea of a free press was still fluid, and the Soviet legacy of hospitality was so inviting that Cengel followed her Latvia posting with a move to Ukraine. There she made several trips to Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. It was on her second reporting trip that she met her future fiancé. As she fell in love, the country fell apart. The beginning of what would become the Orange Revolution had arrived. Cengel’s adventures are illuminating, tragic, and often hilarious.
"Cengel demonstrates a knack for finding compelling stories, including an on-the-ground report from Chernobyl at a time when engineers were still working to cap off the reactor with a cement sarcophagus. . . . The author has a fine eye for the details of newsroom politics back when newspapers were read and newsrooms were packed with offbeat characters. Sometimes gonzo, sometimes hard-charging-a welcome report from the front lines in a time of torment and hope."-Kirkus Reviews "Cengel ably captures a complicated region in which citizens make do with few resources, where phones are tapped and many workers aren't paid, and where the people encountered sometimes seek bribes, are pessimistic, or are drunk. Cengel's language is precise, and her historical context invites readers in, regardless of their knowledge of former USSR countries. Big risks and moments of gravity make From Chernobyl with Love both human and heroic-a satisfying and gutsy memoir."-Meredith Grahl Counts, Foreword Reviews “Katya Cengel’s account of life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe is a joy to read: lively, informative, and hair-raising in equal measure.”-Vesna Goldsworthy, author of the international best seller Chernobyl Strawberries
“Katya Cengel writes with a rare honesty. Her narrative voice is both plucky and vulnerable, a combination that allows readers to feel her excitement, fear, and hope as a young American reporting from the former Soviet Union.”-Peter Nichols, best-selling author of The Rocks and A Voyage for Madmen
“Katya Cengel’s From Chernobyl with Love is a charming, bittersweet story of young love and journalism. She deftly captures the chaotic environment, first in Latvia, then in Ukraine, as the newly independent countries struggle to find their footing.”-Karol Nielsen, author of Walking A & P: A Vietnam War Memoir and Black Elephants: A Memoir
“Not too many young journalists would ditch the beaches of California for the cold, corruption, and chaos of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Katya Cengel is no ordinary scribe. In her witty, insightful, and heartfelt memoir, From Chernobyl with Love, Cengel uncovers it all, from Latvian Nazis to Ukrainian uprisings to finding love in the land of nuclear disaster. From Chernobyl with Love is a rewarding blend of candid experiences and expert reporting from an important yet enigmatic part of the world.”-Franz Wisner, New York Times best-selling author of Honeymoon with My Brother
“Cengel is a brave and beguiling guide through stories and countries often ignored by the West, writing with passion about the people of Latvia and Ukraine and the trauma etched on their psyches by oppressive governments, corruption, starvation, and nuclear disaster.”-Jennifer Steil, author of The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Woman’s Adventures in the Oldest City on Earth
ISBN: 9781640122048
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
288 pages