ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the symbolic and rhetorical uses of childhood in Alexievich’s hybrid text, which combines history and story through oral accounts and personal narratives related to the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in what was then the Soviet Union. By focusing on the ghostly presence of infants and children in the book, including the collective voices of children included in its “Children’s chorus,” as well as accounts of infants and children by those who cared about them, this chapter takes a literary perspective on accounts of Chernobyl as focalized through the lens of childhood.
