I found Stalking the Atomic City both difficult and unpleasant to read. The writing style was confusing - I think intentionally so - and the author didn’t explain what was going on, as well as jumping between tenses and anecdotes constantly. I do see how the writing style was intentionally challenging but frankly I don’t think that justifies it.

Kamysh’s narration refuses to acknowledge any positive aspects of the Chernobyl exclusion zone or why people would be drawn to it (e.g. the recovery of nature, the freedom from conventional it offers, etc). Instead he glories in cynicism, despair, and just plain muck; for example, constantly referring to himself as a “bum” in a self-berating, slightly pathetic way. Again - while I know it was the intended effect, a book that manages to be such a gruelling reading experience despite only being about 150 pages long is going to get a low rating from me. It gets two stars rather than one because I do recognise Kamysh was doing a lot of this on purpose.

Markiyan Kamysh takes you on a fascinating journey into the Exclusion Zone - the toxic wasteland surrounding Chornobyl nuclear power station. He works as a "stalker" - a tour guide for illegal tourism, guiding the daring into illegal territories to visit a world largely devoid of humans, but still with some random inhabitants and fellow dodgy trespassers.
This is an excellent read as you learn what this off-cited wasteland is really like from a bonafide expert. When he's not running his sketchy tours, Kamysh often ventures into the Zone on his own, inexplicably drawn to this poisonous world, with seemingly little concern for his own long term health and wellbeing. His father was an on-site liquidator, so maybe it's some strange familial compulsion.
Kamysh takes you way beyond the familiarity of Pripyat and its oft-photographed abandoned Ferris Wheel and dodgems, and into rural villages where lights still burn in windows where people illegally returned to their ancestral homes, scaling the power plant pylons to survey the scene, and the irradiated mechanical graveyard filled with helicopters, fire engines, cars, etc, all of which have steadily been looted and stripped down with the passing of time, until almost nothing remains, apart from some disappointed tourists.
Along the way, he dodges the police, patrols and criminals who fractiously co-exist in the area, occasionally having unpleasant individual encounters with all of them.
What with one thing and another, I doubt I'll ever see the places he visits with my own eyes, so living vicariously through him is a truly great experience. Highly recommended.

Anyone like myself with an interest in Chernobyl will enjoy this. A different take, it is a translation of a 2015 book and is written by one who evades border patrols to explore the are of Chernobyl fenced off to the rest of the world. Whether we support this or consider it irresponsible, this is an interesting story of the explorations.

The author reveals his experience in the Chernobyl affected zone and brings out the grotesque parts of it for the readers to understand the past and its effect on the present. Amazing book.

It was very strange to be reading this book (in March) during the war in Ukraine, as it was originally published in 2015 and shows a way of life which may never be the same again.

I would classify the book as a memoir but it's quite a secretive one. The author is an 'illegal tourist' in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (the Ukrainian spelling 'Chornobyl' is used here) and has explored the area more than a thousand times, occasionally getting caught by the police. He seems unconcerned about the radiation and is more afraid of being injured by aggressive looters or wild animals. Quite often he'll bring friends or other tourists to the area, where they trudge through bogs or snow, break up furniture for firewood, smoke a lot of cigarettes, drink a lot of alcohol and sleep on bare floors. Throughout the book, he tries to work out why he always returns. It's a contrast to life in the city (not mentioned by name but might be Kyiv). The emptiness of the area and the unconventional people who are drawn to it are a kind of therapy, I think.

The translation by Hanna Leliv and Reilly Costigan-Humes is in American English and occasionally the expressions didn't quite make sense to me. The writing was certainly evocative and should appeal to anyone with an interest in urban exploration. Several images are included, which are bleak, yet elegant in a way. There wasn't as much narrative description as you might expect. It's more about preparations, actions and feelings.

[Review will be on my blog, 20th April]

Unfortunately I came away from this one very frustrated - a story about a regular 'Stalker' of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, sneaking where the official tours don't go, living essentially rough in an abandoned city for days and weeks at a time promises a lot, but this delivers little.

I didn't find out as much about the history of Chernobyl and Pripyat as I would have liked. I didn't find out enough about Markiyan Kamysh's motivation or feelings on the area, and I certainly felt I didn't find out enough about the place itself as it is now. Instead I found out which bit of a room he slept in, how wet or dry he was, and how many guards he saw....

A shame.

Delirious, dangerous, and rather intoxicating, Stalking The Atomic City tells of the author's visits to the 'exclusion zone' that exists about Chornobyl. There's more than a little bit of Trainspotting about it but also I think a kind of longing for life to be lived on one's own terms, to find a place within the world that can be known in a way that nobody else has ever known it. There's ennui in it, there's a discomfort, a sharp, sharp edge of unease, and something rather, utterly fascinating.

I loved this. I've been trying to read more translated fiction and was really interested in what this book might do. I know very little about the topic and the area and so, in a way, Kamysh guided me as much as he does the people he takes into the exclusion zone. In a way though, his guidance becomes a kind of manifesto for visiting the zone as much as staying away from it. Come with him. Stay away. Look twice. Close your eyes.

Stylistically, it's pretty distinct. I suspect you'll either love it or hate it but you need to experience it. Rich, wild, contradictory sentences spike up against each other. Tenses play against each other, rules are forgotten, perspectives shift - and sometimes all of this happens all at once. There's a wild edge here, one that tries to evoke something very particular as much as it shies away, self-consciously aware at what its trying to do. I liked it a lot. I'm always on the side of literature that tries to be something, to do something, to break new ground, to form new shapes. And the shape that Stalking The Atomic City makes is intoxicating.

Beginning with a potted and putrid history of the Chornobyl accident and displaying unconcealed disgust at the creation of nuclear power which promised an Utopia but delivered Hell on Earth, Markiyan Kamysh’s “Stalking The Atomic City” screams relentlessly from the pages in vivid, honest and profane language.
This is a story about Stalkers, a subculture of adventurers unafraid of the radiation that still permeates the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and its surroundings, described here as being the size of Luxembourg, including the infamous town of Prypyat. Kamysh, who is one of many such people, recounts his experiences as an “illegal tourist”, spending days or often weeks hiking through the Zone, sometimes with friends, camping out, getting drunk and exploring the deserted buildings. Run-ins with police, looters and wildlife, sleeping next to the remains of dead wolves and battles with the merciless Russian elements are tempered with the breathtaking sights of the Zone such as the Chornobyl-2 antennas, described vividly as “behemoths” and “titans”. In the abandoned houses, Markiyan finds peace, and considers himself to be the real deal amongst the rich hipsters who visit the Zone.
Markiyan also offers a field guide of sorts to the virgin visitor to the Zone,- what to wear, what to take - but advises us to do it not because he tells us to, but because we are degenerate; that normal people have no business even being there. He tells us about his father who was one of the original clean-up crew after the Chornobyl accident, of shepherding naive first-timers on trips into the Zone through waist-deep snow, and shares a beginner’s guide to looting. The Zone is almost like an addiction for Kamysh; he curses the Zone, hates it and swears he’ll never go back, but he always does, if only to feel the overwhelming relief of leaving it. He feels proprietorial towards the Zone, much like the titular stalker in the film by Andrei Tarkovsky; it is like a lover, the ultimate non-sexual relationship. He mourns the dismantled Chornobyl landmarks, victims of the most recent clean-up. Asked about the dangers to his health, he has no fears, taking life as it comes, his way.
Haunting, monochrome photographs from inside the Zone, pepper the book, stark reminders captured for all time. The English translation by Hanna Lelia and Reilly Costigan-Humes of the 2015 Russian original is excellent, creating an unfussy style that is very easy to read. The writing is lean and immediate with hardly a word wasted.
Markiyan’s story is told with a sense of freedom and irreverence throughout, and I felt a little envious of his having found joy and contentment, even in such an ostensibly awful place. We can envy him this, if not exactly the location where he finds it. “Stalking The Atomic City” is a short and affecting book that is full of life in a place of death and I cannot recommend it highly enough.