Writing the hidden histories: A study of Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer

Abstract

This paper sets out to analyse the political aesthetics of the genre documentary prose in revealing the hidden realities of the disaster as employed in Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel prize-winning work, Chernobyl Prayer. Since it was a time when the Soviet Union was under communist rule, and the government stifled dissident voices, a multitude of facts about the incident was concealed from the world. Alexievich endeavours to expose the otherwise unheard realities of the event in the selected work understudy by recording and documenting the diverse voices of Chernobyl disaster survivors. The study provides an alternate narrative of the tragic incident that contradicts the Soviet Union's propaganda. In this sense, the work represents resistance to an autocratic government.